Must be funny...

(This is an old blog from my little archive of things I occasionally write but have nowhere to post them... now I guess I do.)

I've noticed of late that budgetary restrictions are bringing out a side of me that I utterly despise.

I've always hated money, I consider it to be a stupid system, bargaining with what are essentially institutionalized IOU's representing resources we neither have nor can lay any objectively legitimate claim to, using meaningless tokens to represent things which we could just as easily trade directly and without as much risk of fraud or disingenuity.

But the system being as it is, one must either adapt and survive or perish to the folly of one's own idealistic fantasies of a sensible world. And as I adapt, and all the governments and corporations and organizations and other such gloomy buzzwords of drudgery close in like vultures encircling a limping prey, I can see myself turning into something that is at once alien to my sense of identity, and metaphysically horrifying at the same time.

An example,

A month or so ago an old lady in front of me at the grocery store allowed a ten pound note to slip unnoticed from her purse as she fumbled about in that way that ditzy old people do when performing perfectly simple tasks like paying for food, and it see-sawed down like the last leaf to fall from a branch in front of me to the floor by my feet. Naturally I bent down to pick it up, and as I brought it up again I found my palm closing around it as if by its own volition.

Although purely instinctive, I could feel the beginnings of an internal tug of war, as I mentally debated with myself whether to keep or return it. This was barely a split second of doubt, of course, and by the time I had straightened up there was nothing in it, I obviously informed her of what she had done and returned the money.

But that moment of doubt - that is what makes all the difference, that's what I am ashamed of. That person is not who I was raised to be, nor who I have been working to sculpt into the best version of whatever it is that I can for the last quarter century or so. I hate that guy. I look at that guy on tv or in news reports and curse his name.

These financial ingrates, money-grubbing anything for a buck false grinning prats who juggle pennies all day to find the most profitable arrangement, I utterly despise these people. Partly, I suppose, because I never really understood it. Once you earn a comfortable wage why constantly struggle for more?

But more than that is the inhumanity of it, and I don't mean to suggest that capitalism is amoral, simple that to live by those standards alone lacks the spark that gives human beings that special light that makes them unique and remarkable, it reduces man to the mindless rat, scrambling about to gather up as many crumbs as you can, a vacant, unaware look in their eyes as they forage for just one more little scrap.

But now look at me, so pressured by the closing walls of monetary squander that squeeze more and more out of me every day, that cursed ticking clock of inevitability always over my head, a constant reminder of how much time I have lost and wasted, my brain unforgiving in its harsh score-keeping, tallying up one year of failures after another to never let me forget how much work I have to do in so little time.


I've been following the protests in Libya, knowing that there was no other way I could help out, and wanting to encourage this spread of democracy that has seized a world steadily growing in enlightenment, I decided to jump on an email I got from the red cross asking me to renew donations to help them support the people afflicted by the turmoil of the situation.

All I could think as I tried to battle their retarded system that somehow fails to recognize a perfectly adequate credit card to donate just £3 was "just think of what you could buy with that?", the sense of loss from simple trying to part with such a small amount of money, the temptation to just give up at the first hurdle and justify it with some empty self platitude about not taking that £3 for granted made me sick.

My life has somehow fallen onto a set of rails, guided now like a thoughtless train I'm directed throughout my life by people who have money using the fact that I do not to manipulate and control me. The limited choices I have are still just turns being made in a system of dug out trenches out of which there is no observable escape. These actions are guided in such a way that I am now starting to behave like someone I am not.

Tie enough strings to someone and you can make them dance any way you want, but that doesn't mean they can hear the music. I don't want to live in that world, I will not become one of those people. I was taught by decent people to be a decent person, and had to overcome more than a little genetic indecency to become, I will not let the course my life is on tarnish those principles.

The only thing I can think to do is call myself out on it when I let my actions be guided by commerce rather than morality, and make a conscious effort to remain true to myself wherever possible. But that doesn't change the fact that with each passing day, each new debt in a place without work, income, support, help, and no lack of people willing to take you for a mug, a new string gets looped around me.

I don't like what I'm turning into, and if I am to preserve myself, I'm going to have to do something drastic. I've always for some reason shied away from making large decisions, perhaps something about the commitment or change errs me away, or maybe my geek-conditioned brain is just terrified of the lack of save points in case I screw up - but in hindsight it's only when I do make a drastic change that my life has ever taken turns for the better.

The questioned is, which turn do I take? More exits are getting blocked off with each passing moment. Perhaps, time to stretch my wings, and escape the trench altogether? It's up to me. Maybe I just needed to hear myself say that, to believe it.


Oh, and here's a funny titbit for you - the red cross uses captchas to validate your donation. I mean seriously? They have to, what, make sure there are no spambots trying to part with their hard earned cash? We don't want free money from your sort, go on back to 4chan.

rofl.