New-blog - Ina Disguise

Aging, the news and how to read it

August 26, 2016 No Comments

Wolfe and I have just turned 46. I am 12 days younger than Wolfe, and I have to say, I do not know what he was doing in those 12 days, but it must have been really wild.

Seriously, if you wish to avoid looking like an unironed sheet at this age, stay out of the sun. The sun may be fun, but my eyes are living proof that the sun does damage your skin quite significantly. Otherwise, I am suffering from neglect, caused by being busy doing other things and not having a relationship with anyone since I ‘met’ Wolfe, since it would have been a rather pointless waste of everybody’s time.

At our age, Wolfe and I ought to be practising calorie restriction to prolong our lives. I say practising, because the benefit is really derived after the age of 50. I reckon that at this point we should be shooting for about 1500 or so as a maximum per day, reducing to 500 or so by the time we are 60. If we happen to go over that now and again, it is less damaging this way.

So, you can see that you should spend your late thirties to mid forties researching how to get maximum nutrition from minimum calories and deciding what is bearable.

Since my foodie friend has returned home, I have eradicated arthritis in my left hand, rather important considering I sew with my left and do everything else with my right; stiffness in both legs, what I can only describe as muscular congestion across my collarbone and a feeling as if I am about to suffer a fairly serious stroke in terms of fuzziness. I am now no longer deaf in my left ear, all because I have returned to my preferred option of fish salads and supermix, a concoction I made from a combination of my herbal knowledge and a few recommendations from Wolfe. I am achieving more, doing things better, and generally not quite so inclined to hurtle towards death. If you do not wish to eat fish, however, fermented foods fill in the gaps left by your raw diet, and then it is up to you to investigate any options for fine tuning (see your preferred alternative nutrition advisor)

What you should not do, is listen to your GP, who is likely to know very little about nutrition and certainly won’t like it when you present your superior blood counts. (in my case raw at 41, my blood pressure, cell counts, and other indicators of blood quality indicated that I was about 16) The guidelines offered by the Board of Nutrition in the UK, and FDA in the USA are very supportive of the food industry. This is a balance of industry and the little they actually know about nutrition. There are several ‘truths’ which are not actually anything to do with how you function, or what your nutritional needs are after decades of self abuse in the form of eating ‘normally.’

Obviously, like most things, this does not affect everybody. Some people are able to burn off excess calories and their bowel is speedy enough to ensure that they are not carrying 40lb of caked faeces around with them. Some people are not, and as you can imagine from any incidences of nappy rashes you have seen, carrying poop around is not a good plan if you wish to stay well.

Speaking of poop, Andrew Neil is this morning trying to pick a fight with me about the oil figures. I have responded that any country with oil reserves it when the price is low, and several others have pointed out that extracting oil at a cost of $50 per barrel is not cost effective when the price is $55, but no, Andrew, the overpaid journalist must crush anybody that tries to speak to him, rendering my response rather pointless. Money does not buy manners, brains or flexible thinking in someone toeing the party line at the BBC to pay for his next car/holiday/house.

The point about independence is getting the government that you actually vote for to do the things that actually benefit the population. I am guessing that Andrew Neil has never had to stack shelves for a living, and I doubt that he has ever had to interview a weeping, severely depressed, skilled carpet worker in Kilmarnock, who, if Westminster gave a damn about Scotland, could have led a perfectly normal happy life. He does not spend much time in Scotland, so he is unlikely to look at our architecture and wonder why we cannot afford to build quality housing anymore. He is unlikely to be affected if the population of Easterhouse, Paisley, Mallaig or Lanarkshire suffer from lack of inward investment because the government does not care to encourage any.

So we are unlikely to hear anything but contempt from a man who has led a very fortunate life, and has nothing better to do than attempt to challenge a person who has actual responsibilities in the form of protecting my mother from daylight robbery, whether by her own children or the Tory owned care home down the road. He just does not understand how everybody else functions, because his life is just peachy. Andrew Neil is not the only journalist guilty of toeing a party line, they all have to serve a master.

So, to bring us finally to the point – we can see the connection between my two topics for today – you cannot understand what you cannot see, and why should you if your life is OK? If your health is fine, you won’t understand why other people have to take great care of theirs, and it will not matter if you give people bad advice, as long as plenty of people are employed by the food industry, the NHS, agriculture, pharmaceuticals. If your life is easy, you will not understand why people would want to vote for an alternative, risky but more promising future. People are quite dangerously stupid, even the ones that try to tell you that they know best. Therefore, your best option is to shut the door on them, and find out for yourself.

health

So how am I?

August 21, 2016 2 Comments

This week has been emotionally eventful. My friend is away again, probably for a fairly long period this time as I was having serious episodes with my chest and overall health. This is a good thing for my health, and a bad thing for my emotional well being as he is good at distracting me from my screwed up life.

My friend is a foodie, and my friend has an unnatural capacity for consuming large amounts of conventional food. He completely refuses to eat raw, although I managed to persuade him for a month or two when I was raw and he looked far better. He seems to have some sort of aversion to vegetables generally.

Unfortunately, this meant that he refused to listen when I asked him several times not to bring food to the house. It is surprisingly easy for me to cook for mother and eat raw as long as I omit key foods that I know I cannot share space with. As with any drug addict, you just avoid situations or spaces when you will be confronted.

I am not particularly neurotic about it. When not raw, I am low carb so this is pretty flexible. I do not think that it is too much to ask to have control over the food that enters your house when you do not get out for years on end. My friend was good for making this easier, in the form of us getting out slightly more often as he was helpful with mother.

It is not getting to complete a thought or finish a sentence that wears you down. It is being basically laughed at for wanting a bit of consideration in the house you are responsible for. This is enough to make me give up, particularly as I seem to have long term low grade depression after the Wolfe thing.

The Wolfe thing really started after my family spread a lot of lies around in the hope of taking my mother’s money. Before this, it was not oppressive. After this, it was the only nice thing to think about. They have not stopped lying and bitching all the time I have been giving up my life for hers.

The good thing about this situation is getting lots of work out. He really does have a touch of magic when it comes to self-expression. His very existence is about ‘doing it till they stop you,’ which is rather helpful if you are a shy geek. I still suffer from chronic anxiety, but it gets poured into getting work done.

Obviously the confidence crisis curtailed a lot of heavier academic work, but I am hoping the transition to Boris Johnson will cure that. In the meantime I have a huge pile of half finished artwork to do, and a lot of writing to catch up on.

I am still at a loss to explain the unblocking on Twitter. I haven’t checked facebook. There are a number of possible reasons, coincidence, Twitter fault, somebody else managing the account and unblocking everyone. I am not sufficiently presumptuous to assume that anything has changed.

Having said this, I have finally come up with a proper name for the mandala. I have just extended it, so it will take a little longer, but I think we finally have our first really iconic piece on the way. I would be grateful if someone makes sure he actually gets to see a picture of it when it is complete.

I would have liked to do something more academically serious for Wolfe, but I guess things have turned out the way they were supposed to.

motivation, politics

@Gazthejourno and misogyny

August 20, 2016 8 Comments

Today I have worked hard on the mandala, and am feeling rather easily amused. So I see that @Gazthejourno believes Glasgow, a city famed for its incredible Victorian and post Victorian architecture, a fact we like to keep secret from the rest of the UK, is a sewer and that the SNP are Nazis. He is a lightweight tabloid journalist that believes he can bring about a defensive erection in the jock-hating English by mentioning haggis.

So, I have decided to add a misleading headline of my own to this charming man’s mention in my ongoing blog. Today’s topic is about @Gazthejourno and mysogyny. Now Gaz can enjoy the effects of people who cannot be bothered reading the post making assumptions about him, just as they do about the SNP.

For the uninitiated, the SNP are about as far from being Nazi as you can get. So far, in fact, that the Union Jack is now associated with racism, insular thinking and not getting the government that you actually vote for. Instead we are ‘ruled’ by a series of appallingly disinterested politicians, toeing in many cases, a line that they barely understand. “Oh but we have to starve the poor, it is right here in the party history. The Conservatives are the party of conserving the status quo.” Or even more tragically “Austerity is right, it must be, the Tories have always done it, so Labour should now do it too.”

Wanting our country back is nothing to do with hating English people. Whilst feelings run high amongst a population sick of being lied to and sidelined, we have a tradition of not only welcoming, but marrying and bonking ‘foreigners’ who come to our shores. Gaz has failed to do his homework. To be fair, he probably isn’t asked to do much, at whichever rag he scribbles for.

Now for misogyny. I have had lengthy relationships with many misogynists. They are under-rated, in some respects, as they are usually tragically inadequate and actually hang around for years, in between their attempts to have a relationship with a trophy bitch. As trophy bitches do not particularly like being interrupted, and they certainly don’t like anyone questioning their right to other people’s money, these relationships inevitably do not last long. Any question of them lashing out in anger is laughed off and the trophy bitch simply goes hunting for a better prospect. I used to play backgammon with a money pig that had married one of these goddesses, and despite his constant whining, he was perfectly happy.

I have always assumed that these things come down to ‘daddy issues.’ A man who has always failed to please daddy, assumes a more exaggerated male posture than he is really capable of, choosing to spend his time on male pursuits in an effort to placate the male gender for his failure to impress. The trophy bitch he marries, was very spoilt by daddy, who was away working to pay for her lipstick. Therefore her spending his money on ribbons and fripperies whilst he watches football or cricket suits both of them perfectly.

If he calls her crazy, this is fine because she is a woman, and incapable of doing anything sensible anyway. This gives you a lot of leeway to do really silly things, and not be blamed for them because you are a woman. If he cheats on her, it is because he is a big man and cannot help himself. As long as a financial arrangement is reached, the relationship then survives.

Likewise, he does not have to grow out of it, and neither does she. I have lost count of the number of elderly couples like this that I have come across in the course of my life. It is a trade-off, like many other trade-offs in life. Their divorce rate may be marginally higher, particularly in the USA, where trading her in for a younger model is a sign of wealth, but otherwise nobody has to change anything about themselves, and all remains fine.

As I have said, I have had twenty year or longer relationships with dudes just like this, so I know one when I see one, and it does not phase me one bit. Weak men are fun, it is just different fun, and at the end of the day, as long as you have a few of them, does it really matter if they stray off to try another trophy bitch? They always come back, sooner or later, for some comforting ass kicking.

creativity

My birthday, and I’ll sew if I want to

August 18, 2016 1 Comment

Well, today (18th) was my birthday and I spent it working on the mandala, which is looking lovely. It is scheduled to take another month, but I may alter the plans a bit, depending on how it is looking when it is through this bit. It is extremely complex, and so I have to take it one section at a time. There is also a lot of overstitching, which you have to plan ahead for with a large piece of work due to maneuverability issues.

The Wolfish tank is being tiled at the moment, and I am thinking about starting back on the enlightenment portion of the project shortly. Wolfish is next up after the mandala is complete, but will take quite a lot of time, and I will have to find a bicycle for Harley, as he is in the tank too.

Writing has stopped as I am waiting for some cables to see if I can scrape the books off the old hard drive, which cannot be started by conventional means. So this time I had to research data recovery. Interestingly, I found that data recovery is not all that complex, and there are quite a few things you can try before resorting to a data recovery company.

Wonders will never cease, the only person in the world who actually remembered my birthday was Wolfe, who apparently chose today to unblock me from Twitter. Why this would be I do not know. I can only assume that there is some sort of Twitter fault, or he is looking for some amusement from my timeline. Either way, he is unlikely to change his past MO, and so I can look forward to a pretty freaky conversation with a random stranger which makes no sense at some point in the future. This is unlikely to get us very far.

It is odd that Boris comes across as a very kind person, despite his political affiliations. I will be working on Lucifer Ogilvie as a priority because of this. Best Adventure Ever is best left until I have completed this work, and by the time I have finished it, I will have some handle on what the artwork for Boris will look like. So far, the only thing I know is that the colour range is a lot more subtle, and the work a bit more technical. Boris’s mother is an artist, so I trust that he can be relied upon to be a bit more understanding than Wolfe was. I also have a bit of mathematical work to do for Lucifer Ogilvie, so this will be fun.

My apologies to regular readers for a spot of scattiness here and there in the last few posts. I get little sleep because of the worry of mother, and this seems to be affecting a few things. I will be working on this, along with my depressing lack of self care, over the next few months. It is no fun being stuck in the house all the time, but feeling ill does not improve it.

Should you see an ad on twitter, it is because I am experimenting a little to see if it is any more effective than facebook or google. I am not expecting much, but I will let you know how it goes.

I have made no progress at all on the marketing or coding side of things so far this year, but once the sewing is out of the way I will be on it.

economics, politics

The new political era begins with…

August 17, 2016 6 Comments

The new political era begins with….

The last couple of days have been interesting with three key pieces of news

Bayer is suing Europe for preventing them from killing the small number of bees we still have
Poland, who’s workers are elsewhere in the EU earning more money, are employing North Koreans
Neil Oliver throws his toys out of the pram because somebody used his own words against him

Why am I putting these three pieces of news in the same post?

I have been warning of the dangers of over-large business for a very long time. Basically, if people had any brains, they would research everything they buy extremely thoroughly to ensure that their money is not supporting:

indentured labour (Cadburys chocolate, Apple, Asda via Walmart)
land redistribution to the wealthy and destruction of the planet (GMO and the chemicals, such as Round up which support their distribution, and the Bayer equivalent)
investment in unethical practice (most large banks)
monopolisation of retail (supermarkets, chainstores)

Now we have a lovely example of what you have to look forward to following TTIP. Big business is now ungovernable, as they will be able to sue to get whatever they want. You can look forward to branded everything, with no alternative if you change your mind. Your opportunities will be extremely limited unless you can find a crazy benefactor to provide you with sufficient capital to compete, even in a limited way, on almost every product. Bayer haven’t even bought Monsanto yet, and they are already illustrating what will happen constantly after TTIP has been signed.

For those who still do not understand. 80 percent of France’s bees are dead due to pesticide poisoning from Bayer products, and Bayer would like the right to kill the other twenty percent by selling pesticide. Without bees, the world is likely to hurtle towards a very swift unnatural end. GMO is bad for small landowners, bad for the environment, and bad for your personal freedom. The giant chemical companies producing your lovely cleaning products, garden chemicals and chemical weapons do not wish you well, or think far beyond their next quarterly performance report. In the meantime your food supply will be under the control of a guy who wants a bigger swimming pool and could not care less if you are healthy. (think Tories)

Things are not looking good. If you replicate this example for retail, you can see what I mean about your children, or their children, not being able to do so much as open a shop if they want to, because as soon as retailers like Walmart have the right to, they will prevent this via very tight regulation, or simply move up the supply chain until the consumer has no effective choice but to give them money. Just so you understand how this works – in the USA, Eli Lilly did a deal with Walmart to produce diabetes medicine which could only be sold by Walmart. Hence, you go and buy your Frosties on the basis that sooner or later you will be at the pharmacy buying diabetes medication.

So, if you are following this, food at source, food at the point of retail, and pharmaceuticals to cure your food related illnesses are provided by extremely large companies who collude to direct your consumption. You should really ignore 99 percent of what you are told and find out for yourself just how corrupted your life has become, whilst you did nothing.

The world is not an innocent place, and there is no need for you to play the game and become sick because the Board of Nutrition is infested with representatives from companies such as these. You could simply opt out, accept the fact that you are lied to every day, and go and find the truth for yourself. Give your money to companies who do not act like the above, and who need to grow to compete and prevent the abuse of the consumer. I have told you this several times already in previous posts.

So, that deals with point one, here we go with point 2:

With governments and business alike small is beautiful. Being in a large state, even the UK is too large for me personally, is a bad idea, because you lack control of key decisions. Poland is now sending its labour force abroad to send money home and employing labourers who are being exploited by the regime in North Korea. NATO and the UN get their boats fixed by North Koreans. Yes, the very people who claim that they are the enemy are now exploiting them and feeding the regime with money these people earned. Meanwhile, jobs are still scarce in the countries the Polish have been sent to and it is you, the native population who are told that you are scrounging scum who must take repeated losses in wage rates. Poland is doing OK out of it. The UK doesn’t care as long as the plumber comes quickly, and there is nothing at all wrong with the Poles. The key point here is – you are being directly lied to at every turn, and the North Koreans continue to suffer. This time, however, the blood is on your hands.

Point 3

Neil Oliver has effectively just announced the beginning of the UK’s drive to prevent a second referendum/yes vote. Using the word cancer against him would simply have been using his own words, and he has illustrated perfectly what the Uk is planning on doing to prevent independence. They did it to India, too. England imagines that if they just keep telling people that their culture is subordinate, they can carry on taking resources.

The good thing about this is that it is entirely predictable. Blocking the most aggressive trolls and concentrating on the swing votes using actual data would be good. Keep an extremely cool head and double check everything before you use it, as Twisty fell foul of Wing’s ‘Gingerbread’ post earlier this week. I will post some facts and figures in a handy post at some point relatively soon, for those who want a lazy reckoner to refer to when challenged. I managed to turn an abusive troll into an apologetic worm this morning by simply staying calm and ignoring most of what he said, so I recommend getting up from the computer at frequent intervals when irritated.

The reason for Neil kicking this off before a referendum is even being discussed is fear. Westminster is now seriously worried about losing the golden-egg laying goose. This is a positive sign. Whilst I am concerned about leaving England in the lurch, I do not think they would show us any concern whatsoever.

Taking these three pieces of information, I am more convinced than ever that Brexit was a good accident, although I do not trust the Tories with power long term. If they show me some evidence that they can cope with real responsibility I may think more highly of them, but at the moment I suspect that cash will still be king with these individuals.

Frankly, you would be safer if it was in the hands of Prince Charles, who saw the light about GMO and big business a long time before the government did some years ago. I realise many of my nationalist readers will spit on that for an opinion, but it is a fact. Honour and duty are not quite dead yet.

To summarise:

The world is about to turn to a corporatist shitstick, and you will be at the wrong end of it. Rethink your plans and think smaller and more locally. Keep a close eye on government, as they are no more competent than you are. Stay cool, and make positive decisions. Reread this post.

The post The new political era begins with…. appeared first on Ina Disguise – Author

creativity, politics

Life hacks for Amos Yee

August 15, 2016 No Comments

This post is for Amos, since I notice he is wasting his time with a bunch of social enquirers and not applying himself to actually learning anything. Moral relativism is a fucking bore.

Here are some free philosophy books. I recommend at your age, that you skim through these fast, but get a broad understanding. You will be able to find most of Plato free online, I recommend you start with this as he is a very clear and simple philosopher. Once the pegs are in place, it is far easier to hang the other philosophers on the pegs. Go to Aristotle next, then Hobbes and Locke. After this, do what you like. I recommend that you read at least two History of Philosophy titles to get a broad overview of where you want to go from there. There are a variety of options, from what you are saying you are most interested in moral philosophy and basic political philosophy.

Gutenberg free philosophy

Open Culture free philosophy

28 Sites With Countless of Free Philosophy Ebooks

After this, get a basic understanding of the the three greats, Durkheim, Marx and Weber, but do not waste a lot of time on sociology as it is for pussies.

Free Sociology books

More Free Sociology books

You seem to be reasonably bright, so from here go for an introduction to economics. A-level will do for starters, again there are plenty of free texts online.

Apart from this, you actually need to earn a living, and my feeling is that you would like to do this by expressing yourself. Bullshit Performance Art is not going to cut it, so you will want to write a book, or improve your scatty blog at some point – I recommend, given your age and capacity for sponging up information, that you immerse yourself in programming languages, graphics and 3d modelling and shoot for making your first game in four years or so. This will be a far more effective way of getting your point across to a far greater number of people, and as you are likely to need to hide given your location, should enable you to make a living from anywhere with a fairly low profile. Again, you can get started on this free of charge. Start with Javascript and C# and work from there. There are plenty of free tools if you look for them, so do not be tempted to throw money at it.

Do not waste your time discussing alternative forms of government year after year as it is really not useful to you. Far better to explore the world as it is, armed with useful tools for labelling and looking at it.

Apart from that, well done, your videos are not boring, however you will want to grow out of that shit relatively soon.

Ina

economics, politics

Posh White Trash

August 13, 2016 No Comments

Those who have been reading the blog for a while, may have picked up that I am a bit posh. Not champagne-drinking, Puccini-listening, bun-throwing posh, but certainly on the posher side. My parents weren’t all that posh, and my siblings, although they like to think they are posh, are a rather grubby, dishonest, grasping type of posh that the world could really do without.

I, on the other hand, am more of your oh-so-worthy worried scruffy noble posh. The kind of posh that nobody really wants to employ, because we value honesty and integrity over money, which makes us rather unpredictable and a bit too competent at times. There is nothing worse than trying to pull a fast one and having your underling/colleague point at you and tell you you just aren’t good enough.

This means that I am very helpful if you happen to be nearby and require some help with anything, or if you want anything organised before you get rid of me in case I show any sign of independent thought or action. This is not particularly convenient for me, but immensely helpful if you have more Machiavellian tendencies. What I really need is to be around somebody a lot more savvy and mercenary, who smiles at my attempts at worthiness and simplistic view of the world in terms of thinking that we should make some efforts to actually do the right thing, now and again.

Having said all this, a junkie in Govan once attempted to mug me at a bus stop, and I was able to talk her out of it by pointing out that she had children, a house, a nice watch, a nice phone which she was using so much I can only assume she had plenty of money for her contract, and really had no business attacking me as I was returning to my mother’s house after another miserable day in a call-centre because nobody actually wants a smartass posh graduate in Glasgow.

Even the museums refuse to take you unless you have been unemployed for some considerable time. I am not the only person who has been extremely frustrated by this, and the attitude that people like me do not need to work, just like everybody else. It is testament to my bloody-mindedness that I managed to keep myself in multiple jobs until my mother needed me, despite this.

Anyway, having given you some insight into my odd political mix in terms of the parental revolutionary communist/conservative gene mix, I have some concerns about the mess that is the DWP at present. We spend a lot of money with private companies repeatedly hammering the poor, when far more money could be gained by employing a great number of accountants to retrieve the uncollected taxes we are owed. These taxes to which I refer are owed by individuals and smaller businesses, since I believe the larger companies negotiate their enormous amounts of relief, and frankly, if they didn’t, they would simply find a way to pay their tax to somebody else.

https://speye.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/no-job-no-house-begins-7-november/

Please take the time to look at the table at the beginning of the above blog post, and ask yourself whether the government have prepared for taking an extra half million children into care due to homelessness? Conservative and Labour alike, if under Smith, are willing to follow this plan. I can only assume we will be getting articles about breeding scroungers to prepare us for the vans turning up to evict and split families, since the only way some of these people are going to be employed, is if the government shells out yet more money forcing employers like Poundland to make them work for nothing.

Iain Duncan Smith, and his half thought out, poorly planned and semi executed plans for welfare should really be prosecuted for what he has done to the disabled, welfare claimants and now families in the course of his celebration of the Conservative love of societal inequity. God Bless him, we all know he was sparing with the truth on his CV and is not terribly bright. Further, it is probable that an even nastier character stood at his shoulder egging him on as he laid waste to people that need opportunities and hope rather than eternal damnation. How clever of him to resign on the basis that he no longer agreed with his own poorly made plans! I worked in Easterhouse in the nineties, and again in the noughties, and the Easterhouse he saw was vastly improved. I wonder how he would have responded had he been hunted by a pack of dogs, as I was in the nineties? Security was tight back then.

I have seen some evidence this week, that the Conservatives are quietly trying to tidy up this mess. Labour, of course, are in no position to challenge them on anything, because they are still trying to kill Jeremy Corbyn in case something awful happens, like being voted into power. I sincerely hope, for the sake of all these children, that the Conservatives take action quickly.

May I ask why it makes sense to channel people in poorly paid work back into the welfare system to do the same job for no money? I presume it benefits the companies willing to make people work this way, but do you really think this provides people with opportunity, social mobility or a sense of optimism? Is crushing the spirit, and lowering the birth rate via housing benefit policy really good for productivity in the workplace? Perhaps people would be more motivated if instead you offered them hope, and sufficient to eat, instead of contempt and ever more punishment.

Malnutrition hospital admissions in England and Wales

This is not to say that I do not agree with anything that the Conservatives do on principle. I have far more loathing for New Labour. They have a far more sordid, unoriginal and dishonest approach to producing the same results. What does concern me however, is that a love of your country should involve pride in the inhabitants and a noble wish to provide a basic level of decent care, nutrition and health, and I do not see this at present.

There are ways of elevating the whole economy, which seem to be regarded as rather quaint and old fashioned and which our current crop of politicians appear to have no knowledge of. I am losing my patience awaiting some sign of awareness. Is it that they do not know how to do it, or is it that most of the population want to see people suffer and die for their own amusement? If the latter is the case, then evidently I am out of step.

motivation, politics

Climbing Trump Tower

August 10, 2016 No Comments

I happened to tune in just before Steve, from Virginia, an ‘independent researcher with an important message for Donald Trump,’ was yanked to safety by an impatient and very strong policeman. He looked about nineteen, and very confident that he would not get a hearing any other way.

Since Ina Disguise exists for exactly the same reason, I am thankful that I do not live in America, and that I did not know that wealth imparts such power in the USA. In the UK, if you have something to say, then a PA checks it and passes it on if it seems useful. In America, you are supposed to accept that your bank account dictates your worth, and nothing that you have to say matters unless it is wrapped in dollar bills or accompanied by a spectacle of some kind.

The reactions online were interesting. Would he have been shot down if he was black? Was he crazy? Would they let him complete the climb? His video, which clearly stated that he did not think that he would get a hearing otherwise, indicates that he is a shy geeky guy that likes climbing, and feels that he has something important to say to Donald Trump. Since it is likely that he is considerably more intelligent than Donald Trump, I doubt that Donald Trump will understand what he has to say, which is a shame.

The most shocking part, was the men who complained that he looked like a girl, and that they would like to see footage of the beating he would get from the police once he was in the building. He apparently left the building in a stretcher, so either he was extremely tired, or he cannot walk at present.

After seeing scenes of evident brutality in Turkey recently, this is of some concern. Are we so overcrowded, as a planet, that seeing people get beaten is simply entertainment, and is it so impossible that a young man has something relevant to contribute to an arrogant and extremely spoilt man’s publicity campaign in the form of running for President?

Why on earth would a country be so deluded as to assume that a man who has struggled for nothing in his life, who evidently despises women and people of other races in equal measure, be competent for a role which has become pivotal to the rest of the world? With power comes responsibility. Should the rest of the world be forced to allow an ill-educated, vicious, and evidently thoughtless nation pick the person in effective control of the balance of global power?

In the course of watching this, I discovered facebook live, and have been watching people all over the world discussing health, talking about themselves, partying, having sex and generally sharing even more information about themselves. Most of it is not very interesting, progressive, or useful. Just lonely people trying, like my cat, to reassure themselves that they exist at all.

Poor Steve from Virginia is now being sent for psychiatric evaluation as a result of his stunt. Having been in much the same situation of not being listened to, and feeling forced into the public eye in order to exist at all, apparently, I completely understand why he felt he needed to pull a stunt. Presumably climbing is his thing. I hope that he gets to submit whatever he has to say, at least.

It has been suggested that Trump is actually paying him to do this, since he got into a spot of bother with his second amendment suggestion for Clinton yesterday. If this is the American idea of diplomacy, then we have a lot to fear in the near future. Neither candidate is good for the rest of the planet.

If it was up to me, and it is not, I would get as far away from the special relationship with America as possible. I noted in a recent poll that I am not the only person who feels this way. Putin has never been so popular in Europe.

As it is unlikely that America will make any significant changes, we can look forward to more input from China and Russia within our lifetimes, and a war will probably be invoked to take care of our current over-population problem.

Such is the illusion of choice. You can see clearly what is going to happen, and since nobody listens, there is little you can do about it. Might as well climb Trump Tower, create an alias, or go off on some other tangent. Brutality, cheap manners and lack of taste wins, because America decides who gets the guns. This is not the world I choose to live in. With role models like this, forget America as a worthwhile ally and think again.

Note for regular readers – I had yet another massive laptop disaster, and Best Adventure Ever has been lost for the fifth or sixth time. Lucifer Ogilvie is also gone, but it was a minor loss in comparison. This is another new computer, and I will be rebuilding the old one, since evidently it is my lot in life to spend several months building the equipment I need as I am not particularly wealthy. There will be a short delay as a result. Anyone would think that somebody does not want me to complete the Wolfe projects. Tough tittie, I will be doing it anyway, since I am too shy to go climbing any towers.

Uncategorized

Drunken Buffoonery – Wolfe’s Birthday

August 6, 2016 No Comments

Here, I am, in probably my favourite place in the world, my mother’s house, on my own. What joy!

Twisty is here, and is very kindly looking after mother, whilst I have a moment of utter selfishness, taking stock over the last nine years.

Nine years ago, almost to the day, my mother had a stroke whilst her other two daughters sat and watched it happen.

Nine years ago, the day before, the Banking Consultancy job ended because the banks went to the High Court to prevent them having to give people like you money because they had not done business properly. I laughed as a room full of people wept over their lost mortgage payments, since they had given up their normal jobs on the basis of getting twice or three times the money they normally get. Yes the class renegade was right, as usual. The world is a muddy, murky place.

The night following this, my sister called me to tell me that a random blood clot coming adrift was my fault, and that she was entitled to my home. Apparently this is acceptable behaviour in my family.

The day after that, the other sister was let into the house to await news, and used the time to get keys cut to my home so that she could go through my belongings, threaten me and invent spurious stories to back up their claim to my mother’s money. You would think there was lots of it. There isn’t.

Four years later, after a corporate scandal in which I earned my brother quite a bit of money by being honest, he ‘took control’ in order to attempt to take all the family money. I was to live in a rented flat. My family are poison, and they tried to use me to rob their own parents. I was so ashamed. You cannot really invite a gentleman to share a life like this.

I like to attribute my 160lb weight loss to David Wolfe, because by some irrational quirk of fate, I loved him, despite his many obvious failings. I regarded him as someone who lacked, and needed the very thing he was trying to avoid. I had no other reason to want to go on living, after finding that my family, who had never been very great shakes, were utterly worthless, self- obsessed and inadequate people who would cheerfully kill me for a tenner.

The reality was somewhat different. I had a great deal of knowledge, gained over a lifetime, and I just happened to like him for a variety of deeply emotional reasons. There was something about the pain that he inadvertently expresses that I plugged into very readily. My relationship with Twisty is along similar lines. We share pain, and we share tolerance of things that most people cannot even touch in the course of their relationships. It does not always go well, but altogether it is a very healing and healthy relationship.

It is a strange thing, to pick your knight in shining armour on the basis of their ability to deal with pain, but life gets complicated as you get older, and you are fortunate if you can find someone as special as David or Twisty. One has been blamed for nothing at all, on the basis of spite, and the other has been blamed for the state of the world, on the basis of plain, old-fashioned motivation. Life is always chaotic, because it is life , and chaos is the nature of life.

My current focus is on Boris, because Boris has gone as far as he can go without me. Boris will be shocked, but Boris will not be hurt, because hurt is not the nature of my work. I have enough love to give Boris, because Wolfe does not understand what I do, and neither does Twisty.

To clarify this rather abstract concept, I am positing myself as a kind of wireless extender.

I love, therefore so can you. Go forth and love.

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economics, motivation

Fakery and Modern Marketing

August 4, 2016 No Comments

I see so much fakery online, particularly since I started on the Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing Project. People talk about authenticity, but when authenticity includes Rihanna explaining why she did not bother to design her own shoe collection, you realise that people basically jump on linguistic bandwagons without considering what the words they use actually mean, never mind whether it means anything to anyone. I seriously offended a few Rihanna fans, when I pointed this out at the time.

Last week, I happened upon a ‘social media guru’ advising his apparently adoring fans on how to achieve – wait for it – 125 hits on your blog using twitter. He wrote an entire post on it, with largely useless and irrelevant advice, so that you too could achieve a small fraction of what I achieve with every single post, and I do that without an subscriber list or tremendous amount of effort. I am sorry to say that this guy has evidently missed the entire point of Twitter.

Likewise, people like David Wolfe put a tremendous amount of time and money into achieving massive follower lists, by hook or by crook, as investors and media alike like to be validated by looking at largely fake numbers on Twitter and Facebook. I think I have about 50 likes on the Ina Disguise page on Facebook, and I have 25,000 regular readers, and another 16,000 or so who find me in the bookshops rather than on the website.

You could say that I am stupid for not taking all the conventional advice on offer, for not bothering with vanity advertising on facebook or google, for not bothering with heavy marketing budgets or promotion, but the reality is that fake followers are worthless, that your regular readers like to dip in and out of your topics, depending on what they are, and that they do not want to commit to hanging on your every word without you providing something unique and special.

What is important is getting your work into the right hands, very easy for somebody well connected such as Nigella Lawson, who did not even have to know anything about cooking, but extremely difficult for everybody else. Matt Haig was lucky enough to be circulated amongst the ‘right people’ for his book on depression, and now he gets media coverage before he even writes the book. As he is on my friends list on facebook, I have a peep now and again, and he is an extremely unassuming guy. One of the writers on the Hunger Games also friended me for a while, and he was also very dull.

Really what I am trying to say is – you will not get your follower number on your gravestone, and it is entirely meaningless in terms of being picked up by someone who matters. It just isn’t how social media works. Spending your time and money inflating your numbers, is time and money you would be far better to invest on producing better work and thinking of ways of getting it to the right people.

The only people impressed by huge numbers, are people who seek to leech from you as much as provide you with opportunities. It is a marketing con, designed to promote flotsam over serious content, and unless you plan to produce endless flotsam at a rapid rate, it is not much use to you.

For Wolfe, I can understand it. He is interested in ignorance. Ignorance pays the bills. Ignorance lasts for a year or so, and ignorance makes money when people want a fast solution rather than acquiring any knowledge. Wolfe is in the ignorance business. He has taught me an awful lot about the difference between depth and distribution, and he is right about many things. He is right, and he is wealthy, at the expense of being respected or particularly liked long term.

Especially for writers, there is a wealth of useless vanity advertising that you could indulge yourself with, but it will not get you into the hands that help. Spending your time oiling up a crew of equally vacuous authors and hangers-on on facebook may sell a few books, but it does not demonstrate love of your craft or a development of your skill. It is up to you which you prefer, but as with most things, success does not correlate with talent or skill.

On the first day of my author’s page on facebook, I was attacked by a gaggle of genre writers who refused to believe that anybody could write in several genres for the same series, which was essential for the Best Ever and Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing series to attract people to David Wolfe. This was considered rookie madness. It has, as any raw foodist will tell you, been a very successful strategy rather than churning out yet more tiresome raw recipe books that only raw foodies will read in terms of numbers.

At the same time, another writer complained that nobody should put out free work. A year later she complained that she could only dream of the numbers I had reached, with minimal effort. She is still churning out the same Agatha Christie rip-offs and her sales number in the hundreds.

My journalist friend asked with considerable disinterest how I was doing, as she is in this ‘no free work’ school of thought. My view is – get over yourself – your first two books will be worthless, your third might be OK, and why on earth should anyone want to pay for an unknown author, any more than they would pay to hear a pop song for the first time? You have to establish yourself. Yes, an email subscription might be a good idea, but it is probably better for you, and better for your readers, if you spend your first few years establishing your name, learning your craft by putting out some free work and seeing what works for you. There is a host of options for doing this, some are covered in previous posts (see Shameless self-promotion)

Look a bit more closely at the big names you admire. Are they really any good? Rather than matching up to the numbers, look at actually being better than they are, regardless of the financial benefits. You will be a lot happier with lower financial, and higher personal expectations.

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