The Shaking of the Keys

When I was a kid, my father worked as a salesman for a magnet factory. We had a big box of magnets out in the garage that were samples and souvenirs from the factory. I can remember the cow magnets, which were long rounded rods you would get a cow to swallow, and then all the hardware the cow managed to chew up would collect around the magnet. We would try and see how how many cow magnets you could get to stick together in a chain when you pulled them out of the box.

That actually isn't as exciting as it sounds.

But we did get some big ring magnets one time. I discovered that, if you put a magnet up on the TV screen it would distort the picture. And I tried out the ring magnet on our brand new color TV and the things it did to the picture was wild! Of course, once I took the ring magnet off, the picture stayed all distorted, and needless to say, I freaked. I tried turning the TV on and off, but it no difference. So, I just turned it off and hoped that no one would notice. Fortunately for me, whatever happened inside the TV fixed itself, as the next night when it was turned on, it was normal.

I'm not sure I can say the same for my brain. I would regularly run magnets over my skull, knowing my brain was electromagnetic, and figured some kind of weird experience would occur. But it never, or at least, not so I could notice.

Nowadays, you can hack you brain in a much more sophisticated manner with DIY Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, or the recent Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation. I knew a guy, maybe a decade ago on a metal casting forum, who was going to experiment with it. In fact, his last post on the forum was how he was all set up and going to try and it and looking forward to the experience, and he would be back after the weekend to tell us all about it.... and that was his last post ever.

Doesn't mean anything bad happened to him. Maybe he entered an alternate reality and saw no need to come back.

Speaking of alternate realities, word is that another deranged billionaire  - Ken Langone - thinks his situation is the same as the victims of the Holocaust, where he and his fellow fat-cats are the poor, persecuted Jews, and all of us consumers, the people who bought all his shitty stuff from his shitty store, are the Nazis.

Ken and his fellow oh-so-put-upon billionaires

You know, I really have to wonder why someone doesn't just slap into some form of cognition that soggy bowl of oatmeal sloshing around in Ken Langone's wrinkly old noggin. Maybe that is not possible.  

One thing I do know, is that it makes for press, and I've got to wonder if that is really what it is all about. It's the shaking of the keys, distracting the dumb rubes and yokels of this country from the actual problems by creating issues for them to worry about.  Remember when Dick Nixon shredded the 4th amendment with the Drug Wars by getting white America all worried about crime and drugs? Even though both were trending down by the time he got all his draconian legislation passed?

Remember how the billionaires got the teatards all worked up about the Debt? Got them all hooked on goldbuggery and the fragility of the dollar? Even though gold - at it's highest price EVER - was outperformed in the markets by that promise of future labor and ingenuity which we know as debt?

Ever notice how, after the Newtown massacre, the NRA and the hobby arms industry (supplying the big toys to big boys) distracted everyone with the mental health issue? Even though the mentally ill are the least likely to be violent? And in fact, a much better indicator of violent actions is alcohol abuse?

Ever notice how, when rich people get rich, it really has nothing at all to do with the people who actually do all the work? Notice that those people, who shoulder all of the risks, in that they have their life's earnings, or a significant chunk of it, dedicated to making the project or innovation or enterprise happen rish FAR MORE than the venture capitalist who basically throws down pocket change and risks essentially nothing in comparison. And notice where all the rewards go?

Notice all the talk about free markets, and people who suffer from platonic derangement syndrome whine about it's not really a real free market, even though government supports and sustains the market? Even though, the people who complain over the internet about all this, fail to see how their entire modern lifestyle would not exist without the galaxy of first rate national laboratories and federal subsidies fund innovative companies, and then we just give it all away for free?

Nobody notices this shit?