The Biden - Putin Swiss Roll Show

 

Well, how does one even begin to sum up the meeting with these two numpties today? The wee man, all 5 feet 6 inches, has been in power for 22 years. On the other side of the height/power scale, we have the tall man, all 6 feet 3 inches, who has been in power for seven months.

Physically, mentally and power-wise, the two couldn't be different. The wee man was, for the want of a better word, a spy, a KGB leader, about as trustworthy as the late Oliver Hardy going on a diet. With the 78-year-old White House internee, we have a man who has been in politics for around 50 years. Over recent months, in certain websites and alternative journals, I have heard both men being described as wankers (nothing new there, then), arseholes (assholes if you are an American), jackasses, pricks, mother (you know what’s), and the one I liked most: dolt-schmucks. What the woke and millennial generations think of these two nationalist rulers, who knows. Maybe we older schmucks take a more gladiatorial view. Vladimir Putin, although he maybe isn't that self-aware yet, is a little dictatorial oligarch and, as I understand, has a personal wealth of £160 billion. What the fuck? £160 billion? Where in Hell's nation did that money come from? 

Then the White House oldie - having used that word, I wonder if he’s actually appeared in The Oldie magazine? Must check. Anyway, he’s worth a measly $9 million according to Forbes magazine. You could say he’s actually poor in comparison with his antagonist. Do these two numpties have anything in common? After about a half-hour I finally came up with my answer - bugger all. These two will meet in Geneva today, have a coffee (the wee man will probably down several large vodkas), and explore each other’s territories. Will they find any common ground? Answer? Nope!

Can’t wait to read tomorrow's newspapers! Watch this space!

Why Are So Many Idiots Getting Duped by 'Make Money Fast' Scammers on YouTube?

 

I ask this question for this reason. An ex-colleague of mine went through a bad patch financially last year due to Covid-19 and lost his job. So he took to the Internet to try and find 'work from home' jobs on YouTube. He told me he was spending anything up to eight hours a day constantly visiting these websites - more of that in a minute - absorbing all the promises and assertions that things like, 'Make $1,000 a day doing nothing!' So, I questioned him further; did you actually get anywhere with it? Nope! Why? He said that in many cases most of those YouTube videos and the accompanying websites left him dazed and confused, baffled even.

I decided to start checking out these videos myself and man did I learn something; in fact many things. You see you have all these guys (and girls) - numpties as we would call them here in Scotland - who are like sheep. They view other peoples' (numpties) YouTube videos and copy them. I mean when I was doing my research I lost count of the number of times I came across the following:

·         Make $500/day watching YouTube videos.

·         Automatic $5.00 by clicking adverts.

·         $6,590 on Google in 48 minutes.

·         Earn $300 a day typing names.

The list goes on . . .

So did I learn any lessons by exploring this online tripe? Well, yes and no. Yes, in that I learned yet again why these scammers take advantage of the dumb and the vulnerable. They are savvy enough to know and lure idiots to their websites so they can sell them stuff. And no? In terms of the negative - no - I got chatting to my ex-colleague again and I explained that I still could not believe that these scammers have got nothing else to do in life but to deceive and hoax their way to a living.

I could perhaps offer you the names of these people but for legal reasons I shall not. I, as a perpetrator, in naming and shaming these schmucks can in effect, here in the UK, be classified as a criminal offence. So better be safe than sorry!

Christian Eriksen - It’s Not All About Winning

 

I just thought I'd write this piece about the near-tragic death of the Danish footballer, Christian Eriksen. He was playing in the Euro match between his home national team Denmark against their neighbour Finland. I was watching the match live when all of a sudden he, with no players around him, just fell to the ground. Within seconds it was obvious there was something seriously wrong. Anyway, to cut a longish story short, they applied CPR, restored his breathing, and was taken out of the stadium and to hospital. It is now Sunday and I gather he is up and recuperating. Great news!

So, I have been a big football fan all of my life. I can go all the way back to when, as a schoolboy, I played for Larbert Primary School football team as a striker. Over the years maybe many of us became supporters of our local team - maybe not. Because it is a competitive sport, you're going to have winners and losers. The competitiveness can lead to tribal clashes, ructions and of course violence. We only need to reflect on the many examples: Rangers v Celtic, Manchester United v Manchester City, AC Milan v Inter Milan, Barcelona v Real Madrid; I could go on.

But this takes me back to yesterday and Christian. Here was a man who spent seven successful years with Tottenham Hotspur and last year moved to Inter Milan where, last month, they won the Italian Serie A title. Again, it is all about winning no matter the mental and physical costs. This wonderful football player may never play at the highest levels again. He has realised the hard way that putting one’s life on the line to win a cup or league medal, with all the prestige that goes with it, might have an impact on just how serious we must take the sport. Life is too short when the mentality is winning no matter the outcome!

I do keep reminding myself - and others - that treading the middle way is always a positive, an alternative even. Why? Think about the millionaire businessman whose recent yearly profits show £55 million. Is he happy? Not really because next year he wants to achieve £70 million, £80 million, maybe £100 million. Greed takes over. Suddenly, Covid-19 comes along and, within 12 months, his business is almost over. I’m not saying it’s negative not to aspire to higher things - of course not - but just keep things in perspective.

No doubt Christian Eriksen’s outlook on life will have changed overnight!

Greed, Hatred and Delusion - Social Media and Ego Infatuation

 In this short piece, I want to tackle the plight of the upsurge of modern social media from a Buddhist point of view. I call it a plight because, nowadays, there is an across-the-board intoxication or reliance on social media to express our thoughts, feelings, emotions and beliefs. Had the Buddha been walking our streets today I can only wonder how he would react to this modern-day, self-obsessed phenomena. It seems like every other day I read in the newspapers about yet another ‘celebrity’ being ‘fat-shamed’, trolled, harassed and having to deal with inflammatory long-windedness.

I think much of what I said in the previous paragraph I might equate to the Buddha’s teaching of the Three Poisons that constitute much of what we would call an ordinary human being. He offered this teaching to cover greed, hatred and delusion and how to handle them in everyday life.

With greed, he refers to our selfishness, our misplaced desires, attachments, and grasping for happiness and satisfaction outside of ourselves. He talks about hatred, this seemingly innate spirit of anger, our aversion and repulsion toward unpleasant people, circumstances, and even towards our own uncomfortable feelings. And thirdly there is delusion that refers to our dullness, bafflement, and fallacies, our wrong views of what constitutes Reality.

These three 'poisons' have been with us from time immemorial. I personally, who has studied Buddhism over a period of 45 years, have lived with them, analysed them from one year to the next, decade after another. So how does one connect the three poisons to current social media trends? Well, let's start off with selfies. Back in the 60s and 70s there wasn't such a thing; you got someone else to take your photo; it could be a holiday snap, maybe in a pub or club, on the beach, at a wedding. That was the way it was. But with the invention and technological advances in mobile phones, we now have people across the world seemingly intoxicated with taking photos of their faces - I would call it delusion. Because are we identifying our 'self' with our face? Delusion, because is my face the real me when I smile, or is it the 'real' me when I frown?

Such is the recent evolution of Internet media and the infatuation with ‘superstars’, celebrities, media heavyweights and narcissists. Just think of Kim Kardashian, Madonna, Kanye West, Donald Trump, and Julian Clary . . . the list goes on. If Kim or Kanye can take selfies, then why can’t I? As for the two KKs just mentioned, they both exemplify the three poisons but especially greed. Why? Because they are divorcing and it’s said that both parties will be filing for a share of their joint worth: $2.7 billion.

So we can see in this pair an excellent example of the three poisons: greed, well that’s obvious; hatred - where there was only deep sympathetic love for each other then, now exists pure, unadulterated hatred. Delusion? Just add the two previous traits - that’s delusion!