A Little Light Reading

I just finished reading a book called The Grey Gentlemen. It's a strange little book by Michael Ende which dates back to 1974 when it was translated from the original German. Now I'm not the kind of person who seeks out obscure foreign literature, and the only reason I ended up reading this was because a good friend gave me a copy. It's obviously been out of print for a long time, and this was second-hand book he bought specially for me over the internet. Since the only copy I could find on Amazon was listed at more than $90 this is clearly not the kind of book you give unless you really want to.

I'm not going to spoil the book for you by explaining the plot, although the chances that you will ever read it are as close to zero as makes no difference, but I will say that it seems to be a children's book for adults. I don't mean "adult" in the sense of things like my Little Red Riding Hood story, but in the sense that the message of the story would be lost on kids, who probably haven't experienced the things that work, money, responsibility and ambition bring.

The central figure in the book is a little girl called Momo. The message of the story is essentially all about time - the paradox that we spend so much of our lives saving time and yet we never seem to have enough of it. Why is that? And, more importantly, what do we give up in our relentless attempts to save time?

Think about it. We spend a huge part of our waking lives working; especially in the US, we are working more hours than ever before. Our kids spend most of their days at school, and when they're not at school they're being driven around various timetabled activities, or doing homework, all to make them more "rounded" and marketable later, in the world of work. When people aren't working for money they will spend an inordinate amount of time working on their house, or their garden, making them look nicer. Just watch the traffic at DIY stores on a weekend.

Why do we spend so much time working? Because we need the money. And why do we need the money? Well, there's that house, for a start, and the college education, and all the smart clothes that you need to buy so you look nice at work. And we have to eat out at restaurants, or buy convenience foods, because we don't have time to cook a proper dinner every night. And we need better cars too, and phones and iPods and a Wii. (Everyone, apparently, is dying for a Wii...)

The thing is that I spend most of my life working, or thinking about work. And yet I'm not short of money. Don't get me wrong - it's not that I'm rich, but I don't live any differently than I did fifteen years ago, when I had bugger-all money. I'm not intentionally frugal, but most of the things that I enjoy (curry, scotch, lifting weights, fried breakfasts, friends, cream soda, etc.) aren't that expensive. So I'm not short of money, but I am definitely short of time. I love weekends because I can relax and do fuck-all if I feel like it, and yet there's always a feeling that I have to make the most of the weekend because it'll be over in a few hours, and I'd better not have wasted it vegged out in an armchair.

The irony is that in spite of the fact that I'm not short of money but would definitely like more time, I'm engaged every day in trading more of my limited remaining time for more money. And in thirty years, unless I pop my clogs early, I'll be an old man and willing to trade almost anything to have my time over again.

Now if this was just me then everyone would just shake their head, mutter "sad bastard" and get back to their own idyllic lives; but it's not just me. Most of us are engaged to a greater or lesser extent in trading precious time for money, so that we can buy crap that doesn't make us any happier, and which in some cases we only have to buy at all because we don't have any time. A few weeks ago I started making my own bread. It pisses all over the stuff we buy at the store, and not because I'm doing anything special - this is just basic bread machine dough. Even Bison Daughter loves it. And yet we still end up buying bread at the store because I don't have enough time to make the good stuff.

OK, so I'm not about to give up civilization and live in a yurt, eating creepy crawlies and wiping my arse on leaves. And I might buy a Porsche Cayenne this year, even though "Porsche" is practically a byword for "small penis". (It's a risk I'm prepared to take.) I'm just saying that we all spend way too much time rushing around earning and spending. We're not saving time by eating take-out pizza and pre-packaged convenience food full of high-fructose corn syrup. You can't save time - you can only choose how to spend it. And as someone once pointed out. no-one on their deathbed wishes they'd spent more of it at work.

One of the central themes of a book called "Why Work Isn't Working Anymore" is that happiness doesn't come from "stuff" but from time we spend with friends and family. But in the quest for more "stuff" people spend less and less time with friends and family. They have more stuff than ever before but they still can't understand why they're not happy. Even having spare time doesn't do you any good if you don't have people with whom to spend it. This is what Momo knows in the book, but it was also noted by a comedian I heard recently who bemoaned the fact that he didn't use any of the time he had these days to learn new languages or musical instruments, but instead devoted it to "cupcakes and masturbation". You may win the lottery and give up the quest for stuff, but your friends will all still be working so you'll have no-one to hang out with. Faced with the hideous alternative of daytime TV you'll be hitting the cupcakes and yanking that thing before you know it.

This might seem a little depressing, but The Grey Gentlemen isn't a depressing book - it just makes you think about time a little differently. Having said that, I don't know about you but I think it's time for a Scotch...


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

An Exciting Future

Tomorrow's another day in the office. The good news is that, at least for now, I still have an office to go to. The bad news is that, in the face of an economic collapse, we have a moratorium on travel, so the office is now the only place I ever go. I am, more than ever, massively grateful that my job (normally) allows for travel and a change of scenery. Sure, I get the hassle of fat TSA wankers asking me to remove my shoes at airports, and crap seats on tiny planes, but if I had to show up to the same four walls every day for a whole year I think I'd just off myself and be done with it.

Everyone seems to be in the same boat, apart from law firms (that's a recession-proof business, since people never tire of suing each other, and the economic mess just provided a rash of new excuses) and a few similar types of business. We're all tightening our belts, laying people off, cutting expenses, canceling investments, taking pay cuts and missing bonuses. At home we're buying less stuff, eating cheaper food and avoiding big spends like cars and holidays, just in case it's our arse on the line next.

So why is everything suddenly such a fucking mess? On one hand this may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the economy shows signs of slowing down, companies project lower sales so they trim expenses. In the face of a full-fledged economic crash everyone's suddenly stopped spending. Companies aren't investing in new capacity because they no longer need it, so jobs are lost. Banks aren't lending money to people because they no longer have it, so businesses have to halt construction and other projects, and jobs are lost. Consumers are worried that their job may be next so they stop spending too, and suddenly unsold cars and houses are piling up; production has to slow down, and jobs are lost. (Unless you're in the UAW, where for some reason you're entitled to full pay and benefits for life even if you do fuck-all, but that's another story.) Maybe this whole mess started with excessive lending by banks to people who had no earthly hope of paying loans back, and the belated realization and write-off of those "assets", but perhaps it's now nothing more than a crisis of confidence - we're in a recession because we think we are. If everyone believes the future's bleak, and as a consequence stops spending money, then surprise, surprise, the economy grinds to a halt and we're in a recession. You can thank the obsessive doom and gloom media for that.

On the other hand this could just be the chickens coming home to roost. People are being confronted with the crumbling of a paper economy where growth was based entirely on people borrowing money they didn't have to buy crap they didn't need, in the expectation that continued growth would always provide a bigger pay check and a longer line of credit next year. It's like a big party - so long as everyone keeps drinking the hangover never happens, but once you stop you're in for one hell of a miserable come-down. Everyone stopped drinking at once and now we're all gazing around at the vomit and broken furniture, wondering who the fuck is going to clear it all up.

Two things happened today that convinced me that both of the above may be true. Firstly, Mrs Bison and I went for a walk and encountered a man in his mid-thirties walking on a mile-long trail which is either gravel or fully paved, equipped with two walking poles and a strap-on hiking belt festooned with what appeared to be Batman's clip-on appendages. Trust me, if people are buying shit like that to go for a walk on a path there really is no hope for civilization, and maybe a massive recession is what is required to teach people not to waste their money.

Then we stopped by the supermarket to buy some mince for dinner and on the front page of the free small business monthly newspaper was a story about how a pet spa business just got funding for an expansion in spite of the recession. Just so some sad wankers can pamper their dog with a shampoo and set, or have their cat massaged. You know, if people are still out there spending money on fucking crap like that then the economy is alive and well, and as soon as we stop listening to the whiners in the media and get back to business as usual then this will all be over. When we resume normal buying behavior then businesses can start making things, and hiring people again. Then some of them will borrow money, make investments and hire even more people.

Personally I'm looking forward to it. When the economy picks up I'll be back on the road, experiencing the very best in crap airline food and useless airport security. Or, should I be unfortunate enough to lose my job, it appears there's a great opportunity out there brushing the clag out of long-haired dogs' coats, and polishing cat's arseholes. I can hardly wait...


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Stroh

It has long been my view that New Year's Eve is a bunch of hype about nothing - the date clicks over and we're expected to drink ourselves into insensitivity so that we can join hands and sing the few words to Auld Lang Syne that anyone knows, while some ball drops in Times Square or a group of inebriates counts backwards from ten. Then we're supposed to kiss, shake hands and wish each other a Happy New Year, before trooping out into the night, perchance to sleep and reawaken, faced with the same load of old bollocks as last year, only now with the addition of an outsized, fuck-off hangover. The only thing worse is being at home, and having to watch celebrity new year activities on TV; I can only assume that 31 December is a hot suicide date.

This year, however, we went to a party at a friend's house and, in contrast to the picture of misery above, it was excellent. The food was outstanding and beyond plentiful, as was the liquor, with at least ten different single malts available, plus about twenty beers. In fact, there was a game where we had to guess which beer was which on a list of fifteen, by taste. The list included offerings from England, Ireland, Belgium, Italy and Mexico, as well as some decent American beers. It did not include any Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors Light or Michelob Light. In fact next year I'm planning to arrange a taste test with just American Light Beer, along with Donkey Urine as a wild card.

Unfortunately I had consumed an excessive quantity of Mrs Bison's home-made soup at lunch, so by the time I'd loaded up with food at the party I had little room left for beer. What do you do when the space available for liquor is too small for regular beverages? Switch to something stronger of course, and not much is stronger than Stroh 80.



I picked up this 80% alcohol Austrian spirit years ago at a duty-free because I couldn't believe anything could be that strong. It has a taste reminiscent of kerosene with a light flavoring of charred chocolate, and it will burn all the way to your genitals and back again when you drink it neat. This is, I have to say, the only safe way to consume it, because if you blend it in, say, Coke, you will have no idea how fucked up you are getting until it's too late. Then you too might find yourself vomiting from the upper deck of an open-topped bus. (But that's another, much older story.)

Having called it a day at about 3AM, after beer, red wine, vodka cocktails, champagne, Scotch and the aforementioned Stroh, I was ready for the traditional breakfast of champions this afternoon. Yes, I made a pilgrimage to McDonalds because, for no accountable reason, I fancied a quarter pounder with cheese and some shit fries. As I may have mentioned in the past, new year's resolutions are for arseholes, but if pressed to make one on this first of the year I would have to choose "Never Eat At McDonalds Again". Their motto should be "A Little Slice Of The Ghetto In Suburbia". Not only was the food shit (even by their desperately low standards) but as the sole occupants of the establishment we were treated to a ringside seat at a staff dispute between female staff members:

"Have you clocked out?"
"Ahm just leavin'"
"Ah'll write you up agin."
"Ah knew you would, you just causin' trouble."
"Wah don' chew just leave?"
"---"
"What you jist say to me?"
"Nuthin - I wuz jist talkin' to mahself."
"Well don't you be walking by me saying that stuff."
"I wouldna come in if ah'd known you wuz on."
"Well ah'll make sure ahm on every day so what you gonna do then?"
"You ain't gonna have a job much longer's what ah heard."
"You ain't comin' behind here again. You don't got no reason to come behind mah counter."

And so on, until we finished out styrofoam fries and fucked off into the wintry sunshine. I'd planned to take something back home to Mrs Bison, but I was buggered if I was going to buy more crap food at the FcDonalds soap opera that was unfolding, so I went instead to the Hardees drive-through, where the service was quick, the Little Thick Burger was excellent and the fries were (according to Bison Daughter) much better. What was I thinking? I know Hardees is better than FcDonalds...

I can only assume that the Stroh killed off more brain cells last night than I'd realized, specifically those associated with good judgment. Still, it's now 2009, and the Darwinian economic apocalypse that is in full swing should hopefully result in dismal establishments like our local FcDonalds going to the wall. Survival of the fittest, that was Darwin's big thing. Having survived the Stroh though I'm more inclined to the wisdom of Nietzsche: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. By that line of thinking I'm about ready for anything 2009 has to offer.


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison