As I get older, and approach closer to my (hopefully still far distant) mortal coil shuffling, I find myself becoming both more excepting of our mutual fate, and yet more upset by the conclusions I come to as my time here lengthens and my time remaining shortens.
No this is not a maudlin, Oh-Woe-Is-Me kind of post. This is just some thoughts and gripes of a cranky old world-weary traveler, wanting to put his stockinged feet on a log by the fire and sit back with a cold brew and fellow cranky bastards, and gripe.
So. Grab a beer. Kick back. Put your stockinged feet up there, and let's get cranky...
Can someone PUHLEASE tell me who started this nasty rumor that's been going on for some time now, that it takes money to live?
Whoa! Easy there Tiger. I said "live". I did NOT say be lazy.
Yes, I will acknowledge that if I want to sit on my ass all day and be waited on hand and foot, I will probably need money. A farmer does not farm all those extra tons of produce as a gesture of true good will or because its fun. He wants money. Money he can use to sit on his ass and be waited on once in a while. Like to go out to dinner, because he's sick and tired of eating a strict diet of only corn, (or wheat, or soybean, or beef, or chicken or WHATEVER, okay?) because he's less diversified in his crop to concentrate on one thing to make the most.....wait for it.... MONEY.
And ol' Alice there at Mel's Diner And Hooker Emporium ain't gonna wait on you cause yer all that good looking, Bub.
Nope.
She's gonna say "hi" when ya walk in, smile as you take forever to decide whether you want the flapjack special, or just the plate of regular pancakes, cause yer to d..u..m..b.. dumb to realize they're the same fucking thing, but one sounds manly..... and be sweeter'n the cream in that coffee she spit in before dropping it off at your table, because if she were a grouchy old BITCH, you wouldn't leave her...MONEY.
And the girl at the pole doing all those gyrations you always figured were anatomically impossible, yet extremely appealing, she ain't doing it as some weird kind of exercise regimen, buddy. Nope. She's hoping you got something worthwhile to slip in that little G-string piece of nothing she's wearing that really ain't hiding nothing And again, here, we're talking about that big bulging wad in your pants. That's right. MONEY.
Now I 've never once said you don't need money for THAT. I could actually get in with all that gyrating going on. IF I wanted to waste (or usually even had) the money. I never even said that that sort of stuff wasn't what made life kinda fun once in a while. I said you don't need money to LIVE.
People have been living since the dawn of time without money. If they felt like eating, but didn't want to dig in the dirt or sit on a tree stump for hours without end waiting for dinner to walk close enough to hit it over the head with a rock, they could always find someone else willing to do those things, and then trade for it. For instance, I'm sure Moog would have been willing to give up a couple hours of stump-sitting, rock swinging effort to that cute Neanderthal babe in the sabertoothed bikini in exchange for climbing that pole leaning up against the tree and sharing her 'coconuts' with him...
People need money to live either more lazy, or easier, lifestyles. You don't need money for air, (unless your tire happens to go flat and you realize the amount of air it takes to fill said tire just went up to $2.25 for each five seconds it takes until its full again). You don't need money for food. Food grows in dirt. Think about that the next time your at the checkout and realize you just spent Junior's college fund because you wanted a 3 ounce chunk of steak for dinner tonight. You don't need it for shelter, laughter, hope, dreaming, or even love. Unless its that girl on either the pole against the tree or the pole in the middle of the All American Diner, who sells love by the hour.
As far as I can tell from the lofty heights of my many years of becoming as crotchety as I have, you need money to pay the FUCKING GOVERNMENT to ALLOW you to live.
Air is free until the gubmint can finally pollute it enough that you'll need to buy it by the bottle in order to breathe. Water is free until.....uh...wait...gubmint done got that one. Anyone want a fresh beer while we're sitting here? Or maybe a non-pollutin', plastic, recyclable bottle of pure, natural, really honest to gubmint, Fresh Spring Water? And we're not talking that stuff pulled out of the local outhouse and run through no reverse osmosis filter system neither. We're talking real water. You know, the stuff that comes out of the ground and is cleaner than yer sainted mother's thoughts on sex.
And you know the ground is dirt right? That shit's free too. Unless you want to sleep above it, grow food on it, roll around in it, (perhaps with that little pole-ish girl....) or feed yourself from it. Then you'll need the aforementioned money to buy it. Maybe from some guy who has too much of it, maybe from a realtor, it don't matter, its still owned by the gubmint. Don't believe me? Try claiming ownership while not paying the gubmint its pound of flesh. And anything you happen to produce from that fucking dirt will require additional tributes to be paid to the omnipotent ruler of all, the gubmint.
If you want to produce crops to trade to Mel at his diner so you have somewhere for Alice to spit in your coffee and sit and watch pole girl wiggle her wiggleables, you must pay to trade them. Unto Gubmint render what is Gubmint's.
Want to get said wiggling pole girl to 'live' on your 'dirt' and wiggle just for your edification? Better buy (with money) a shitload of condoms. Or you're gonna have a heap of young'uns gonna be running around. Each one of which, of course, will all cause the fees you pay to 'live' on 'your' dirt to increase.
And kids need learnin', right. Education? Sounds good in theory, but thanks to Gubmint, not only does it increase exponentially for each child, but the higher(?) the 'education' the more it costs for diminishing returns.
Colleges no longer teach one how to make a 'living'. They, through judicious use of Gubmint money, teach how to live off the backs of those who already know how to make a living. But if you were to take away their precious green sheets of life, they would no more be able to survive than they are to fly without the (possibly justified) assistance of being thrown off a cliff. Albeit the flight would be fairly brief, and rather unidirectional....
Money is no more than work. Nothing else. It is a tradeable, foldable, easily exchanged agreement of value for service. Or product for sweat. It is earned in direct correlation to the effort put forth. You want money? Put out some effort. Grow a tomato. Do it sitting on your ass at this fire with your stockinged feed up while drinking a beer that someone else made with their effort.
How's that working for ya?
What? No tomato?
Than try this: Go out and dig a fucking hole in the dirt, put a tomato seed it in, water it, nurture it, hell, sing it songs and fertilize the shit into it. Who knows, that might actually do it. But it will take effort. Yours or someone else's. And if it is someone else's, you better figure out what you are going to do to work for the value needed to trade that someone else for the fruit or their work. Literally. A tomato is a fruit. Its just confused...
And this country, its individual workers and producers, are being bled dry of its once proud heritage of patriots who understand this concept. Taken over and besieged by a new breed of consumers and users who believe money is a thing separate from effort and somehow has meaning in and of itself.
Perhaps if we had a gubmint that produced, rather than printing paper sheets of so-called worth out of thin air, or allowed those who do produce to do so without rendering unto Caesar the top of the crop as tribute for keeping us 'safe', and 'free', we each could have an occasional bit of our effort left over to enjoy a moment or two playing in the dirt. Or going out to Mel's.
You do not need money to live. You need it to keep those in power, who produce NOTHING, from taking away the things you earned with your effort, your production, and your sweat.
But LIFE is free. Now put your fucking shoes on and go live it. And next time you bring the beer.
That shit costs MONEY.
Was given a bag of this stuff. Kinda smells to me like a cross between basil and light