November 2005

Guaranteed Annual Income

Do you remember being a kid and reading about the future wherein nobody had to work because machines did all the labour for us? We're at a point where that is nearly true and as a consequence joblessness is a serious problem even for skilled, intelligent and/or hard working people. Wherein for some petty reason they are unable to secure gainful employment. These days, in fact, nobody expects to settle into a single job for a lifetime. Yet this was the norm for humans for a long time and is doubtless behind some of the incredible craftsmanship we see. Craftsmen rarely can earn a living these days because machines have made perfection and quick decorative touches flawless and cheap. The man who carves furniture for a living can only service a very exclusive clientele and there is little room in the market for his talents unless he is truly superb. The singer of today needs to compete with the DJ and his record collection containing any of the singers who ever recorded. Again you need to be exceptional to earn an income at this career. Automotive painters aren't even employed by factories anymore. Now they have to be skilled journeymen, detailers, etc. The market, again, has shrunk for this skilset. Farms are massive. Farmers are few and far between and they still can't earn a decent living at the job. The need for job skills has diminished. Money has become more valuable than skill or activity. We disconnect from life into electronic fantasy.
So what if you didn't have to work to survive but only to flourish? What if the cost of living in a smaller town in a less expensive region of your country could be done for free? I mean, imagine a remote but not entirely unpleasant place and that you could afford to live there on a guaranteed annual income (gai) allowance? Nobody would have any legal right to inquire as to your employment or income status and anyway lots of people there would be using it too. Now imagine you can earn up to double that amount if you work before you reach the tax threshold? What this means is that you can be a poor earmer but still that money would put you ahead of not working at all. How would your life change?
What if you chose to keep working. Now you're earning more than double the minimum income point This means you pay taxes. You have reached the tax threshold. I leave it to the bean counters to determine what the income tax amounts are or how they're doled out accordingto income threshold, but the upshot would be that the taxes at the top of the heap would cover the payouts at the bottom.
Keep in mind that instead of a huge industry of civil services employees dedicated to the social assistance financial plans you'd have a smaller system of trustees for the folks who can't manage their income, most of whose work would be maintaining computer accounts for these people. We'd also see massive drops in petty crime and resulting legal system costs because the GAI would apply to all canadians as of birth. Yes, larger families would have larger household incomes. However, there's more people needing things so they don't necessarily enjoy a larger lifestyle, especially if children have a reduced payout while dependents or something. Again, there's professionals out there who could figure out what it costs to raise a child with dignity but not luxury. Poor folks would also be encouraged to leave the large centers. Ones gai will go further in the smaller centers of a country than in destination cities. Compare the cost of an apartment in New York city against the cost of an apartment in waldhiem, saskatchewan. In fact, you can buy a house for one month's worth of rent in Manhattan. Newfoundland has $1 homes! here in Canada we have these places and I am quite sure they exist in other countries. These lands are usually quite beautiful and the reason they're empty is a lack of industry.
Now, there's a question of maintenance and cleanup jobs. These are jobs few people are willing to do and currently those willing to do them are paid menially. It's easy to think of jobs like this that you wouldn't do at the current wage, let alone for free.
There's more money flowing around, you can hire someone who is willing and pay them an attractive package. Charity organizations could give out volunteer points for regularily employed volunteers. Said points could be redeemable in some way I don't feel like dictating. LOL
There's millions of ways to set something like that up. So by offering good money or good incentives, bad jobs would still get done. Nobody really likes to sit idle. We relax with it for a time but then we get restless and we get up and go do something. It's our nature. We want to create, to impress, to leave a part of ourselves on our world. We'll go clean something or fix something or help someone or build something or solve a problem. It's our human nature and we'll do it for joy! People would shift around in the job pool and settle into jobs they love.
They'd be easy going about the wages because they loved it and had enough to live well. they wouldn't tolerate bad employers because they'd have the security of a GAI. So, what would you do if suddenly you could drop back and live on the cheap for free? Would you go back to school and learn? Would you pour yourself into a community dream you've never had time to realize? Would you stay home to raise your children? Would you finally buy that small farm and grow for the joy of it (and a little profit off the produce?)
A radical social change like this can't happen with the stroke of the pen. It takes the typing of billions of keys and the uttering of gigillions of words. Data and sound flowing around the country and culture, sharing the idea, discussing it's form, poking at it like the tongue pokes a missing tooth, feeling it and knowing the changed idea.
One could consider the commerce version of life as being a rotted tooth. It did a good job but has gone rotten from within and it is giving us a lot of pain. We have to carve out the root and put a golden cap on it and this is going to cost us. Or we can wait till it kills us... Now that we have robot vacuum cleaners and robot factories and computerized accounting and data transfer, why don't we have leisure instilled as a privilege of good citizenship paid for by the system? One thing, I don't expect the very wealthy to appreciate this idea. They know that it means they will pay more than they do now and it might even bite into their personal fortunes a bit. No more the standing upon a pyramid of wealth with fists raised to the sun in victory! They'll still be millionaires and billionaires however so no need to cry for their misfortune. Those folks know how to twist the numbers. They're the folks our tax dollars are supporting right now. They are the income class which cheats government money in the millions every year. They do it very well. Sometimes they get caught.
So that's my great social idea. A revolution of lifestyle and focus. When anyone can go on GAI just because they want to, the shame ought to go down too. At least I hope so. I also think it would be more dignified as you wouldn't apply, you'd just file taxes and get a much bigger refund than you see these days.
Yes, through the kind of tax system we have now, you'd calculate into the negative and this would determine how much the government owed you. Checks could be setup for delivery annually, quarterly, or monthly and there you have it. Money coming in that makes the difference between what you can earn and what it takes to get by. Is that really so much more expensive than our current social system? Do you really think there'd be dramatically more unemployed folks in that scene? Empty jobs? Increase the wage on hard-to-fill positions and reduce the wage on desireable jobs. :-) That's true capitalism! a capitalism based on the human effort and willingness rather than on product availability. a supply and demand of human labour setting the value of the work.
the key has wound down and so have I.

spammer logic? oxymoronic

The logic of a spammer: "If I can just get someone to read it they'll be irresistably drawn to give me money." So they force you to open the mail by subjects like "account info" or "Hi, remember me?" But when I open them and see a link misspelled and assorted sexually related terms misspelled I STILL throw it out! I don't click the link. Do you click the links? Well if you do STOP ENCOURAGING THEM!!!!! Hey, got 2 new birds, society finches. They have a soft little warble chirp they're doing over behind me where I stuck them to keep them away from the other birds till they pass quarantine.

damn i'm miserable

You get up in the morning and you feel like hell. You know it's because of your drug but it's so nice being high while you can. What's more, have a bit now and you won't feel like hell. Well but you should wait till later, there's things to do.....
On the other hand, there's no work to do, everything else can wait for another day. It's a day off. Well, maybe just wait a bit. Oh but I could just have a little bit. Just enough to soothe me. I do feel like hell. Take the pain out of my back and my head, make me forget about the hole in my heart and the rips in my soul. Just takes a little to fix up the morning aches and pains, just get me over that edge.
Turns out the edge is further than I thought. Before long I find out I've gone over the edge again. Remember that tee-shirt from the '70s? "Ooopss, stoned again!"
You know I don't think it makes one hill of beans what your addiction is. I think it's always the same. Like a jealous lover it guards you against others getting close. It impairs you so you can't reach out. It strokes you and cossettes you till you're so weak it can eat you up.
You know too that cold turkey quit for life is the only option. Well sort of. You don't believe it and definitely don't like it. Frankly addiction is still more fun than that looks. Plenty of people manage La Dolce Vita while enjoying their inebriants. Heck, one drunk is even in charge of alberta and pulling it off! There's coke heads in parliament too in fact. I know also that many successful people tipple at the herb too. I've met a number myself.
So why me? Why single me out as the addict? If I had a life I wouldn't do it every day. Of course, doing it every day makes it hard to build a life. I never had any luck in the past when I was sober though, why think if I give up this pleasure that I won't continue to live exactly as I have been for years now and see no changes?
No guarantees. Only experiments. I tell myself when I am going to quit I'll not make myself quit forever, just for some amount of time. An experiment. Or maybe a rest. Trouble is the rest has to last years, not days, weeks or months, to be truly effective. Seems like a good idea but not tonight. I'm already high. I also gotta use up what's left. I'll probably forget by then.... I really don't want to so I really amn't going to. But at least I'm opening the dialog with myself?
No I really do feel far too depressed about my current life situation and this pot is a blessing I am sure. I'm still reeling from losing the dream I'd had for 3 years of being offered a promotion to full time at work. then I'm reeling with the realization that my fiancee is currently deeply involved in "hopeless drunk" state.
On the up side it means he's too far gone to bring his raging alcoholism here. On the downside it means he's too far gone to come here. Even more down is that it really doesn't look positive. I really am sunk. Powerless. I have nothing to say. I can't even figure out how to talk myself into quitting pot. Sobriety? Ewwww.
But dan drunk? Major EWWWW! He goes utterly stupid. I would rather engage in a conversation with someone naturally stupid because they'd be smarter! He can't hold a thought long enough to recognize what it is. Well unless he drives into a rage like he used to do. Then you couldn't knock him loose from it. at least now I've got it clear in his head that I decide when and if I'll speak to him as a drunk. Basically I spend about 5 or 10 minutes being nice about it, then tell him it's really no fun talking to him like this but I love him, then hang it up. He doesn't fight it anymore but there was a time when he would get mad.
essentially he drinks himself into a stupour. He gets at least halfway there before noon comes round if it's a "day off". I wonder when he'll start drinking on working/driving days. Game over if he gets caught doing that. Jail. He'd never get into canada. We separate and I pick up the pieces of my life and figure out how to fit them together again.
I am NOT feeling very good about things right now. I yearn to fantasize about death. I yearn to plan a suicide. I can't though. I love my pets too much. It would devastate them all, they'd lose their home and some would not find new ones. It would be the death of flora to lose this home. Freddy would probably stop loving too. Toby I just don't know but he'd fall apart if he didn't have flora Then there's petey. I really think it's cruel to bounce a critter around and he's already had 2 homes in 4 years. He's going to need me for most of the rest of my life and I don't know if I can keep a roof over our heads all my life. I sure do want a change in the worst way though. I want a chance. My health is starting to go. I could make a list now of complaints. I'm not going to be strong that much longer if things continue and then what do I do? No proper income, not even acceptable as an entry level employee, getting old and sick.
Well you can see why I'm depressed. I'm miserable enough I even jokingly imagined asking for prozac or paxil or whatever the latest designer happy pill is. Then I remembered how those things cause constipation and weight gain and tremors and spasms and assorted variety of unpleasants "minor" complaints. I think I'll stick with pot when I can get it and stick it out when I can't.
I still chuckle over the last time I discussed being upset. Told Dan's mother this when she expressed concern over things being upsetting for me. I told her that being upset is nothing, it's a daily state I'm quite able to live in now. Heh. If she had any idea. I didn't phrase it that way, mind you, I am rephrasing because I don't remember the text, just the context.

oops, stoned again

Poor dan doesn't understand why I ignored him today. I'll have to write him a letter explaining. See, I was trying to solve a problem. When I smoke dope I get plugged lungs. So I thought, eat it. No idea how much is the right amount, I mixed a guesstimate amount into a bannock and overdosed myself. Spent a good 5 or 6 hours passed out and another 5 or 6 hours too wasted to do much. Oops.

killing time

Well Dan and I talk so much I have nothing to say to my journal.
However I'm ripping a movie and need to amuse myself till the app asks me for a blank dvd. The movie is Earthsea. It's incredible. Go to www.imdb.com and search it. If you have read Ursula K LeGuin's books on earthsea, this is the movie. I loved it.
Incredible commercial here I am just astounded every time I watch it again. Even to concieve of this is beyond my grasp. Billions of tiny super bounce balls pouring down on sanfrancisco's hilly streets, flying all over the place in every color plastic has ever found. It's astounding, it really truly is.
I'm wrecking my lungs with pot again. So bad this weekend I get sleepy talking and had hard time working. My lungs get clogged with tar and I get breathless. I really must start eating it. After all I'll only be stoned all day anyway, I may as well assume it.
I've shown no restraint in a long time. Sitting at the keyboard, legs folded in under me, typing. I now have pains in my legs and joints and carpal tunnel symptoms. SHeesh. 42 years old and collecting ilnesses like teaspoons. Well nobody can accuse me of not living life to the fullest I was capable to do!
Petey is flying pretty near wherever he likes. He hasn't got the fine control or the courage for full mobility but he gets to his playstands and cages wthout crashing and that's a victory enough.
I quit the parrot flight list though. I was definitely being ignored there. Some places just won't accept you unless you toe the party line. Free thinking just isn't tolerated. It's the only way I know how to be, ever did.
People are lighting their xmas lights on the houses already. Stores have been decked out for weeks. I don't want any of it to start till mid-december. It's not special when it lasts so long. It's just ordinary. Sure it's pretty, but it's ordinary. Tired. No magic left. I mean ok, it helps adjust to the utter lack of all the things christmas represents. But still, maybe some of those things would return if we hadn't overdone it so badly.
Humans do things to excess, we really do. If we were elephants or deer or wolves there'd be something to control us. As it is we do incredible damage before it's big enough to slow us down!

movie KunDun

What amazing fortune to see this movie. I didn't pick it with any knowlege of it, but was in a hurry and grabbed it for the intriguing picture and name. It's about The Dalai Lama's life in the 20th century. I truly believe he is the Buddha incarnate. I truly think that the world has done a terrible injustice to let foriegners (chinese) occupy and bully and torture Tibet and her wonderful people. I have suddenly thought though of a reason why this might have been the right thing. It pushed the Dalai Lama out of Lhasa and into the world. Before his flight we none of us had heard of him or Tibetan buddhism. Now even the most remote backwater has heard something of it and many of us have heard and learned his wisdom, the wisdom of Tibet. Tibet is not the roof of the world, my friends, but rather it is the belly of the earth. If you lay a pregnant woman on her back is not her belly the highest point? There is Earth's navel, the spiritual center, the place of wisdom. China's invasion opened this up. It was a terrible and painful thing but I question, would remote and isolated tibet, lost in her poverty, tradtions, and primitive culture, have managed to be more than a curiousity for tourists had the Dalai Lama not been forced to appeal to the world? I want Tibet freed, very very much, and I feel that it can happen, but I do not know if it will happen in the lifetime of the current Dalai Lama and I fear he will spend a lifetime or more unfound and unable to reach his people. However, his people are not only Tibetans anymore. He has been birthed into the world and we are all now his people, to be loved by him, to be taught by him. I pray he hears my thoughts somehow and takes comfort from them. It is a great and astounding thing for him to become part of the entire world this way. His philosophies and doctrine of peace does spread, however slowly, through this turbulent world, and has reached even my ears, a poor disabled woman in the rmote canadian prairie. No matter how evil an act, Buddha can find a value and a use within it. No matter how tragic an event, some shining bit of truth and hope may be found if you are patient and determined to seek it.

how dishonesty sprouts

On the way back from picking up a bale of hay I stopped in on Wendel. I had to drive out just past his town. I had a lovely visit yapping away and enjoying his gorgeous house. He's unhappy with it and never did the finishing details it deserved. I think his problem is lonliness. I know it is. He can't fix it because he just won't let anyone have a hold on him, won't let himself get tied down. So he's selling that gorgeous place to some friends and starting over with a chunk of 10 acres and gonna live in a trailer! He doesn't want to pay taxes. Dumbass really.
Well I sure wish I could buy it. I suggested trading houses across the board but he says his is worth more than mine (I don't believe it but haven't the research to prove) and he also says some friends are pretty much intending to buy it from him this spring. My birds would love that vast space in there.
So that had me thinking maybe Dan and I could buy land there in Bradwell and have more space. It's so quiet out there you don't even need music on.
I raced home to call Dan and got through but he was already half cut and too stupid to think his way out of a paper bag. I really would have liked to share my day with him but he's ultra sensitive about Wendel, can't believe we wouldn't just have sex one day! Heh. No, not a chance. Well I'd have told him if he was sober and it was on the phone, but when he's drunk he just can't put sense together. He'd just leap straight to furious jealousy so I couldn't tell him!
It's sad that he is teaching me to conceal things from him. It's against my nature but it's unsafe to be honest with him. I wonder sometimes if its going to be more grief than it's worth with a man who forces me to conceal things and won't be honest with me.
I still believe I can change him! sheesh. Well he's still the best man who'd have me that I've ever met. I guess I don't have enough to offer to do better than a lying drunk. ~sigh~
I felt really sorry for Wendel out there all alone. I care a whole lot about him. He shoulda faced up to being a man and married me instead of being terrified of restrictions. Way too late now, I wouldn't have him if he tried, too much past and pain now. I still care about him, always will.

autism article

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1639392,00.html That article is long and not easy to read, but very very good for discussing autism.

long time no see

It's not like anyone reads along so no biggie I've been out of touch. I'm trying to write this with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It helps if I turn on the microphone.
Well it came out so fucked up I'm going to start all over. LOL Been reinstalling my system after replacing the motherboard and CPU. So other than the RAM it's all new now, new power supply, new video card, new motherboard. So why is the system still unstable? Hmmmmm.
Oh I'm just not into this blogging thing right now. Since I got unlimited long distance (low monthly fee) I've been phoning Dan every night. It's wonderful, I'm getting my yap out of my system (why I got this blog was because I had nobody to talk to) and he's getting more friendly again and happier and he's even drinking less often because of it. Lets face it, maybe drinking isn't the right way to deal with lonliness and maybe I'm not a cure for his drinking, but being in touch with me is helping the loneliness which helps him resist drinking.
Getting someone in your life is the right way to deal with loneliness, no matter what pollyanna new-age people say. They're not alone, they don't know what it really means to be lonely. Living alone doesn't count. When you have nobody to go out for coffee with, then you can find out for yourself that in fact loneliness can only be cured by bringing people into your life in some capacity.
For Dan it's just too difficult to form friendships and especially when he's planning to leave Spokane to move here. I do have plans for him, I don't know if it's a mistake but I do. I plan on introducing him to people locally where he might be able to form connections and I also plan on trying to teach him how to recognize and express his emotions, something he needs very much. I don't know if he'll come home drunk or how often or how it would go but I do know he won't find it so easy to pick up a six pack at the corner store to drink alone in his room like he does now! Around here you have to make a separate deliberate trip to a store that sells only alcohol. No impulse buys. That ought to help him.
If we can just use that sweet first year of marriage to establish new patterns and habits and develop skills for self expression he might have the tools he needs to move beyond the addiction by the time things sour enough to make him want to return to it. Or maybe it's all doomed and I'm a fool and we'll go down in flames. At least that's the impression people in Alanon want me to have.
Dammit. I'd really like to be able to access a support system like alanon implies to offer but it only serves as a doom-and-gloom "shutup and don't whine, just leave and live alone" scene. Useless really. I've been living alone for around a decade, got that down pat and frankly it sucks.
Maybe if he can hold onto our daily hour of talk he can stop wearing himself out with beer and have what it takes to get his act together and actually move here. I dunno. So long as he's being an active alcoholic I don't think he can get here.
Got my 3d World up and running. tourists can't get in sadly because it costs extra, but it's via www.activeworlds.com and you can get into some worlds to explore as a tourist. Tourist: hasn't paid anything, running free. Citizen: Service subscriber, access to most worlds (world owners can close it and make it private) plus contact lists and reserved nick name. Citizens can also own worlds and in fact worlds over 600x600 (p30) include a citizenship. So for $90 you get a nice big world and a subscription, only $20 more than just a sub. However a world does require a computer to run as server (that's the easy part) and a large fat web folder to hold objects (the hard part).
I have a webserver on my computer specifically because of this. It was to run my world that I first set it up. that I can also run my own full-featured website doesn't hurt! You can come to www.villasubrosa.net/gallery/subrosa if you wish to see pictures and some videos of my 3d world. Perhaps I'll make some more too some time of other views of which I'm fond. I may also at some time start to include video of other worlds if I see interest in these.
I'm running "nauseated" in the mood icon because I have a wicked headache again today. Aspirin has levelled it out to a tolerable level but it's still there making head motions uncomfortable. I think it's sinuses.

So much work

I am out of commission on the computer these days for reinstalling a new board. I know it'll be tons of fun when I get it working but I have so many apps and drivers to install and it's already started glitching. Email won't send properly and the modem doesn't exist. ~sigh~ No music on this thing yet, nothing really because I was busy saturday and sunday doing things unrelated to computer.

blah

Just to lazy to write these days even when I have time. Kinda depressed. That's worth writing about I guess as usual it's dan. Well I already wrote about the job thing, how that future has slammed it's door. Well I was picking up hope about Dan 'cause he'd been hiding the drinking so well I hadn't been thinking about it. And he said his folks were selling the house in spring to buy a condo but found out today from his mom that they're not, so he's still lying like a prick. Since I got free long distance I'm calling him pretty nearly every day and by 4pm his time he's already so drunk he can't think straight or talk straight nor remember the conversation the next day. I am not sure, if I really believed he could make it here, that I wouldn't end this. How can I marry a man who lies all the time to me? But he can't get here, he's too fucked up. Can't get it together for that.
So it's easier to just stick it out. He'd not leave easy if I broke up and he does help me out every month with money. So oh well.
This movie I'm watching is really rude. Like a series of scenes from the life of dirt poor hicks. Kids killing cats. Retarded girl kept as a whore by her father for all the neighborhood boys. Sluts and skanks, pervs, it's just weird and gritty and gross and rude, but interesting for sure. If you like things that are too far out in space for definition, here it is. Gummo. (nothing to do with gummo marx)

Hallowe'en eh?

I always kinda feel sorry I'm not doing the trickortreat thing because decorating the house could be fun but I just don't want to put out the money. I had some fun wearing my witch hat and cackling when I ran some errands. Sarah had a scary day too sorta. Well I was scared for her till the vet had a look. She's been barfing and pooping so much I've gotten scared.
Turns out to be something easily fixed by a dietary adjustment. As it happens raw food, chicken especially, is not such a great idea. I suppose if the chicken was fresh-killed.
I think I can probably keep feeding her raw beef and fish but I don't know and so long as nuking the package doesn't stink the house too terribly I'll go ahead and cook that stuff too. Dogs dont exactly get sick from the bacteria, but it does build up over time and they get sick then.
Have you discovered video.google.com yet? No? go discover it.
The new long distance package deal with faster internet is going well. It means Dan and I can talk as freely as if we lived in the same home town. It's making a difference already. He's much better at communicating by voice than by text.
With my improved internet speed I'm able to make public again all my photo galleries and games and other treats that I had up on the site. I've copied it all back over to the server drive but I haven't yet gone into some of the areas and cleaned up the mess I made over the summer adding new stuff and dumping old. www.villasubrosa.net is my site so go ahead and poke around in it. I hope to restart my world sometime in the coming year but it's hard to say how much time I'll have. Well my carpal tunnel is now much too bad to keep typing.