The Matrix

The Matrix movie trilogy is often quoted and referred to these days in relation to the modern world around us and how reality is often not what we think it is. There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there, as well as conspiracy theorists (me included) and they will often ask the question, have you taken the red pill or the blue pill, meaning are you awake to the truth, or are you one of the sheeple who swallows all the lies and propaganda hook line and sinker.

However, I’ve been thinking about The Matrix and in one important way, I’m not sure it means what we all seem to think it means. Neo is “The One”, the saviour, the Jesus figure and he has a small band of true believers assisting him. They are his disciples, if you will.

One of these disciples is actually working against Neo and the rebel cause. He wants to be plugged back into the matrix and be rewarded with a life of ease and riches. He is the Judas figure, taking his bag of silver to betray Neo. The rest of the human rebels display varying degrees of scepticism that Neo is really the saviour they have been waiting for, which probably describes how Jesus was viewed by the majority.

There is the old lady, the Oracle, and I think she represents God, offering advice and guidance, but not actually interfering directly. Or perhaps she could be viewed as Mary, the mother figure, or even a combination of the two.

Then we have Agent Smith, Neo’s nemesis, the representation of evil out to destroy the good guy. If Neo is Jesus, then Smith is the devil. Not only is he out to destroy Neo, he also tries to tempt him. Why do you keep struggling, Mr Anderson, it could all be so easy, he offers, but Neo is not to be swayed in his mission to free humanity and after many trials, including being briefly dead and resurrected, he wins the day, the war is over and the rebels celebrate.

Well, that’s the basic plot of the movie and although it tips its hat to many religious and historical references, it boils down to good versus evil, God versus the Devil.

But, and it’s quite a big but, let’s look at it another way. Apart from stopping the war between the machine overlords and the human rebels, what in fact has Neo accomplished? The rebels are free from further attacks, fine, but are still left living in their bleak underground bases. The earth is still a scorched and blasted wasteland to which they can’t return. The matrix still exists and the majority of humanity are still in their vats of liquid, being used as an energy source against their will, while dreaming their lives away.

In fact, Agent Smith was the one hell bent on destroying the matrix, so doesn’t that actually make him the good guy and not the bad guy we have all been lead to view him as? By making a pact with the machines and destroying Agent Smith, in reality Neo is responsible for preserving the matrix and the domination of mankind by the machines. Great for him, flying about like superman in his sexy black gear, but what has changed for the rest of mankind? Not a thing. They are still enslaved and they are still living in a fake reality - a state of affairs that Neo is guilty of maintaining. Left to his own devices, Smith would have shattered the matrix illusion and with it, the machines' ability to control mankind.

I wonder if the rebels woke up with a hangover the next day and said to themselves, hang on a moment, Neo is actually the machines’ most powerful agent and not our saviour as we believed. We’ve been sold out!

By coincidence, yesterday I saw a video posted on Facebook of a man called Simon Parkes. In it, he was talking about various alien races, which he firmly believes exist, both extra terrestrial and inter-dimensional. I didn’t watch it all because it was quite long and video downloads eat my data allowance like slugs eat your favourite plants, but what I did watch was very interesting.

One of his contentions was that the Earth is actually a prison planet and that humanity is being fed off. I think he said it was by those pesky reptilians. Apparently our emotions are a source of energy to them. Love, anger, hatred, despair, yum, yum, we’re just one big emotional buffet to those green buggers. Remind me to buy a packet of “Lizard-Be-Gone” next time I’m in a hardware shop.

He also stated that mankind has had its DNA tampered with to dumb us down so that we can’t perceive reality as it really is and also to remove our telepathic abilities. He further maintained that when we die, they trap our souls and return them to Earth in another body, memory wiped, so that we can continue to feed them. Don’t, he said, walk towards the light when you pass on, because that is the trap they set for us. If anything, run away from the light as fast as you can and be free of them. Maybe these claims explain past life memories, the wiping process not being a hundred percent perfect, and also the reincarnation beliefs of so many people.

This may all sound like airy fairy nonsense, but I’m not so sure that it is. There are obvious comparisons with The Matrix in that we are all blinded to what is truly real; that we are all in one way or another slaves to the elites and possibly to the alien entities they all work for. And being used as an energy source is one of the main premises of the movie and we all (those of us who have taken the red pill anyway) know how they like to taunt us by showing us the truth in fictional form and having a good laugh when we still don’t get it. It may also explain why our leaders are hell bent on creating constant wars and conflicts, a smorgasbord of misery for the aliens to feast upon. All the dead get recycled anyway, so they can continue emoting all over the shop, so there's not even any wastage.

I have to say, Simon Parkes sounded extremely sane and believable. You may want to look him up on Youtube. Just one note of warning, however, he has the most dreadful comb-over I have seen in a very long time…

Just to end with a small fact about The Matrix. Will Smith was originally offered the role as Neo, but turned it down to instead make his movie “Wild Wild West”. Yep, said no to one of the most popular and critically acclaimed sci-fi movies of all time, to go off and make a complete turkey instead. Obviously took the blue pill, the Muppet.

I Talk to the Trees

Remember the song, I Talk to the Trees, sung by Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Waggon? Well, I was talking to a tree earlier - an old oak tree and very chatty it was - and I asked it what it thought of climate change.

 

"Son," it said, "I'm four hundred and sixty-two years old and I've seen it all before."

 

"Really?" I said.

 

"The climate changes," it shrugged its upper branches. "That's just how it is. In the 1970s and 80s we had nothing but droughts, now it rains all the time and no doubt, in another few years time, we'll be back to hosepipe bans again. The only thing that remains constant is change."

 

"But," I stammered," a lot of scientists are telling us that man is making the climate warmer, leading to floods and droughts and all sorts of chaos."

 

The oak barked with laughter. "I have a giant redwood in the family and he tells me his great grandfather told him the climate was much warmer back in his day. That's why the snakes and crocodiles and other cold-blooded reptiles were growing forty or fifty feet long, or more. The extra heat provided them with the energy to grow massive. Why do you think Britain has one snake six inches long and all the hot countries have things ten, twenty and thirty feet long? Even your scientist friends will tell you that. It's all about heat and the energy they get from it. They dug up bones in Columbia from a snake they named 'Titanaboa' that was around 45 feet long, weighed a ton and they reckon some may have grown even larger than that. Imagine how much heat/energy those giants must have needed."

 

"So man is not to blame for climate change, then?" I asked.

 

"Of course not!" The oak exclaimed. "They just use it as an excuse to chop down my friends, turn them into paper and use that to send you bills for CO2 reduction. I know you're only a human, but I would have thought even you would have realised that. This is a planet. The climate changes. Get the hell over it. You humans do make a terrible mess of everything, but on this count, not guilty."

 

Well, that told me. Tomorrow, I am going to strike up a conversation with a patch of nettles. I'm sure I'll get more sense and honesty out of them than I will our lying politicians and assorted other climate change fraudsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pedal Off!

I hate ruddy cyclists. There, the cat’s out of the bag. Face it, push-bikers contribute nothing, don’t pay any road tax and if one ever runs into you or your car you will discover, to your cost, that they don’t have any insurance either. I don’t drive and never have, so I’m hating cyclists purely from the perspective of a pavement basher, but one who still sees the essential unfairness of one bunch of road users freeloading off another bunch.

 

Bikers ride on the pavements even when no single car is in sight. They weave through pedestrian precincts and dodge down the wrong side of the road as if they were invulnerable to harm. They sail through traffic lights, road junctions and crossings, ignoring common sense and all the rules of the highway, terrifying innocent shoppers and mums with prams and toddlers, intimidating people on foot with their near silent approaches, with no slightest sign of remorse or sense of wrongdoing.

 

They ride like brainless idiots, scooting in and out of traffic, going from road to footpath and back again, without signalling their intentions or giving a moment’s thought to the motorists who have to slam on their brakes or swerve dangerously in order to avoid them. They don’t give a rocket-propelled shit about anyone but themselves, yet still have the cheek to feel they are hard done by, constantly whining about the lack of cycle lanes (which they rarely use anyway, even though they are provided gratis, courtesy of tax-paying car drivers), forever bleating about how inconsiderate other road users are to them, for crying out loud. The traffic lights do apply to you as well you know, dickheads.

 

And what is their excuse for acting like crazed mobile yobs and expecting the rest of us sinners to dodge out of their saintly leg-powered ways? That they are using an environmentally friendly mode of transport, that’s what. Well, you dangerously bloody arrogant cycling terrorists ain’t too friendly to my environment. No sir. May I also point out, here, that the bicycle was not designed for lazy chavs to walk their lead-less muzzle-less pet pit-bull Sampson, nor are they meant to be used as mobile telephone kiosks. In other words:

 

WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING CLOWN!

 

And I hope the dope on the racing bike who jumped the red light and almost knocked me down recently, broke his sweaty weather-beaten neck about ten yards further up the road. If I see that whelk again, I’m going to tip him over and watch him wriggling like an upended beetle, struggling to get his feet out of the stirrups before a huge tanker lorry comes roaring past and squishes him into paste like the turd-burrowing insect he is.

 

Personally, I would like to see a total holocaust among this breathtakingly selfish fraternity of bi-wheeled ignoramuses. Then, once we’d wiped out the sticky-Lycra wearing buggers, we could have all their mountain bikes melted down and turned into electric trams and statues of famous walkers like Scot of the Antarctic, Ian Botham and various American astronauts. The latter didn’t walk very far, I know, but it was on the moon, so hey, that’s still gotta count.

 

Anyway, cyclists, I hate you because you are a menace to the public, a pain in the bum with your bitching about car drivers when you are to blame in almost every accident and near miss and because you think it’s OK to dump your bike wherever you like – on the floor outside shop doorways, for example, because you’re only concerned with what you want to buy and not if anyone else can actually get into the place thanks to your thoughtlessly erected barricade.

 

Mind you, at least cycling with criminal stupidity means the mortality rate on the roads for bikers must be considerably higher than for other users and with each one that gets themselves wiped out, I guess that makes the rest of us that little bit safer.

 

Tossers, the lot of you. Use a bit of common sense and common decency and who knows, I might stop hating you. Except for Boris the bike Johnson, the fat blond philanderer, with his stupid rent a bike scheme, wasting untold millions putting gaudy bright blue cycle lanes all over the bloody place that will likely get used about as often as the moon turns the same colour as the lanes.

 

There’s one bike lane near me at the end of a quiet, rarely used road, and it’s about five feet long with a little bollard separating it from the road proper. Why? What for? How much did it cost and which over paid wazzock decided it was a good idea? These people are so dumb, it’s enough to make you spit red-hot rivets. That money could have gone to the kid’s hospital or a hospice, instead it’s wasted on an unused bit of green tat on the road that probably took about six council workers to lay.

 

And just to add insult to injury, that wally, Ken Livingstone, when incumbent as mayor of London, decided it would be a good idea to also put cycle lanes on the pavements at Vauxhall where I live (one of the heaviest used road junctions anywhere). So now, as a pedestrian, you can avoid getting knocked down by traffic, think you’ve made it to safety and still risk getting killed crossing the cycle lane to the pavement proper after foolishly dropping your guard. No pelican crossing for those and if you’re blind or can’t move too quickly, then God help you.

 

Then we get rid of that fool Livingstone and Boris the bike spends millions putting in blue cycle lanes all over the place (no doubt blue to differentiate his madness from the green madness that came before) which I have NEVER seen one cyclist using. Not one. Not ever. What he should have done is had written right down the middle of them in huge yard-high letters “DO NOT CYCLE HERE, IT IS STUPID AND DANGEROUS AND MAY RESULT IN DEATH OR INJURY TO INNOCENT PEOPLE” and then the cycling morons would have been all over them like ants.

 

And quit the wheelies, already. If that’s the only lame trick you can do it just makes you look like a sap. Unless you intend falling off and seriously injuring yourself, in which case, please continue. I like a good belly laugh and seeing any of you pig ignorant cycling maniacs bleeding on the pavement is one of life’s simple pleasures…

 

Did I mention that I hate ruddy cyclists, by the way?

 

 

 

 

Tax, Tax and More Tax

Tobacco kills. They spend millions warning us it does, millions on studies to show it does, millions on pictures showing the hideous results to put us off doing it, but do they ban it? Nope. They tax it. They tell us we shouldn’t be doing it or inflicting passive smoking on others because it gives them cancer of the face and they provide terrifying pictures to prove it. But do they ban it, I ask again? No. Why? Because they want the tax revenue, because many of them work for the tobacco companies and because they don’t really give a flying fig whether you die or not just as long as they are raking in the tax money.

 

Ken Clarke works for a tobacco company that pushes cigarettes to children in Africa, laying on free music festivals to attract them where they can have cigarettes given to them to get them hooked in a cool place with cool sounds. He would spout about how bad it is over here, but he is a pusher in the third world, just as bad as any crack seller. That Dragon bloke, Duncan Bannatyne, fronted a very illuminating documentary about all this a couple of years back and, apparently, the tobacco company Clarke works for actually gives free cigarettes to local shops in Africa so they can hand them out to kids to get them addicted nice and early and create millions of life long customers – and tax payers. When confronted by Bannatyne with the evidence, cuddly Ken put his head down, refused to say a word, scuttled away like the parasitic insect he is and fled in his chauffeur driven limo.

 

Marijuana is a plant and so is tobacco and both have good effects as well as bad (cigs help prevent Alzheimer’s and dope eases pain, etc), but are you allowed to grow either one without being arrested? No. You can’t grow marijuana because they can’t tax it and you can’t grow tobacco because they – yep – can’t tax it. One is illegal and one isn’t but you are not allowed to grow either, but only because they can’t tax it.

 

If they could make growing tomatoes in your garden illegal, they would, and in places they are already trying to. And why? Because they can’t tax home grown food, or profit from it, or genetically Frankenstein it before you consume it.

 

So who are these people? What gives them the right to say I can smoke tobacco and pay tax on it, but I can’t grow it? Tobacco is just leaves, after all, so why am I not allowed to grow some in my garden? Who made them God and said I can get lung cancer from smoking, but only if I pay the manufacturers of it, plus the tax on top? Who said they are right to tell me not to smoke a joint, but they can go to their tax-free bar and swallow brandy until their brains are addled?

 

Who gave them any of these rights? Not me, was it you? If they could legalise cannabis and tax it, they would do it tomorrow, but it’s a sore point with their blue-rinse supporters and the companies they all work for can’t control it, so no way will they let you have a crafty puff they haven’t profited from.

 

The CIA are said by many to be the biggest drug runners on the planet and our lot pretend to be fighting drugs, but the truth is they only fight the drugs they can’t control, tax, or profit from. Look at some of the terrible side effects of legal drugs, but that’s ok because the drug companies are raking in huge profits from them. Thalidomide anyone?

 

In the past I smoked dope a thousand times and I’ve been drunk ten thousand times. What was the difference? None of it was big or clever (downright stupid, in fact) and probably did me no good at all, but when I used to puff, apart from not waking up with a headache, I wasn’t paying tax to the criminals who run the world and that’s why they don’t like it. Get cheap fags from abroad, do they take them off you at customs because they will make you ill, of course not. They take them because you haven’t paid them enough tax.

 

This was written about America, but it applies all over…

 

Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table, At which he’s fed. Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes Are the rule. Tax his work, Tax his pay, He works for peanuts anyway! Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat. Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt. Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he Tries to think. Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries Tax his tears. Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find other ways To tax his ass. Tax all he has Then let him know That you won’t be done Till he has no dough. When he screams and hollers; Then tax him some more, Tax him till He’s good and sore. Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in Which he’s laid… Put these words Upon his tomb, ‘Taxes drove me to my doom…’ When he’s gone, Do not relax, Its time to apply The inheritance tax. Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit Tax CDL license Tax Cigarette Tax Corporate Income Tax Dog License Tax Excise Taxes Federal Income Tax Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) Fishing License Tax Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon) Gross Receipts Tax Hunting License Tax Inheritance Tax Inventory Tax IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax) Liquor Tax Luxury Taxes Marriage License Tax Medicare Tax Personal Property Tax Property Tax Real Estate Tax Service Charge Tax Social Security Tax Road Usage Tax Recreational Vehicle Tax Sales Tax School Tax State Income Tax State Unemployment Tax (SUTA) Telephone Federal Excise Tax Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax Utility Taxes Vehicle License Registration Tax Vehicle Sales Tax Watercraft Registration Tax Well Permit Tax Workers Compensation Tax STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

 

Got a spare bedroom, they’re even taxing those now. Many years ago, they had a window tax, so even free sunlight was taxed. See many old buildings with bricked up windows, well the window tax is why they bricked them up. Maybe you should brick up your spare bedroom and pretend it doesn’t exist…

Daily Mail 1837

Daily Mail 1837

 

Not satisfied with the mill owner’s generous concession of a ninety-six hour working week, worker’s representatives – rabble rousers to a man – are now demanding two full days off a year and this in addition to Christmas day and Easter Sunday, upon which holy days they already stand idle and unproductive.

 

Sir Barty Ringbit, speaking from his eighty acre mansion in the Cotswolds, told us he is appalled by this latest imposition. “It was barely two years ago,” he said, “that we gave in to their clamour for a farthing a month pay rise. On top of an agreement that those dying of consumption or tuberculosis should no longer be held responsible for training their replacements, this latest outrage is nothing short of blackmail”.

 

Another mill owner, Lord Vileness of Bilgewater, told the Mail that since the abolition of slavery in 1833 and the concomitant increases in cotton prices from the colonies, he has been forced to sell one of his three stately homes and can now only visit his winter abode in Saint Moritz for a bare two months of the year.

 

“At this rate,” he continued, “members of my own family could soon be forced to take some small hand in the business, carrying out what can only be described as acts of common labour such as overseeing floggings and the like. This is an intolerable state of affairs and must not be countenanced at any cost.”

 

Taking a break from his sojourn in the spa town of Cambridge, Lord Vileness told us he would be raising this issue in the House of Lords the moment it returned from its summer recess in seven weeks time.

 

“If we continue to cave in to these scurrilous demands,” he said, “the next thing we shall hear is that children should be in school rather than being usefully employed manning the looms from dawn to dusk, or cleaning the chimneys of the gentry. It seems these Bolsheviks believe their snot nosed progeny should be given their bread and water as a right and not have to earn it with a little honest toil, which has clearly been shown to be beneficial in building moral fibre and in my opinion, has never harmed anyone. Not amongst the lower orders, at any rate, who clearly need a purpose in life forced upon them if they are not to turn out as cutpurses, highwaymen and vagabonds.”

 

The Duke of Sainsbree, delaying his philanthropic visit to Newgate prison where he annually distributes rotting meat and weevil-infested bread – that is yet to reach its not lethal until date – to the grubby inmates, responded to this question of worker’s rights, telling this reporter:

 

“I am a charitable man and work tirelessly for three days of the year to alleviate the suffering of the less fortunate. However, if we continually give in to unreasonable and costly demands, such as miners being allowed topside once a day to see the sun, or their bints being allowed several hours leave of absence for the purpose of whelping their cross-eyed bastards, then I can see a time when, emboldened by our inaction, the under classes will be fighting for old age pensions and the right to cease their labours before death has taken them.”

 

"As for claims that we should be employing those with missing limbs as a sop to the unfortunates of the world, this is clearly ludicrous. God visited these torments upon them - no doubt with good reason - and whether such appendages were lost in factory machinery or in tavern brawls, is neither here nor there.”

 

The Duke’s protégé, Baron Tesko of Littlehelpington, added, “Unless our troops are brought in to crush such rebellions by these villainous and ungrateful serfs, those of higher breeding and status may struggle to maintain their elite places in society and perhaps even face a challenge to their rightful ownership of 95% of the nation’s wealth and be forced to exile themselves in countries such as Switzerland where Sir Phillip of Collins and Saint Bono Du Taxdodge have already taken refuge.

 

 

2014

 

Everything changes but everything remains the same. Read above article again and see the similarities between the nineteenth century and the tweny-first. Welcome to the beginning of the new Victorian age – soup kitchens and workhouses not just on their way, already here, but renamed “Workfare” and “Foodbank”.

 

Exaggerating? Am I?