The Unforeseen Dystopia

I’m a big reader of science fiction and I enjoy books that take place in dystopian or semi-dystopian worlds. However, no writer I can think of seems to have foreseen what is taking place in America and parts of the developed world today. I am talking about the recent phenomenon of “pods” that are gaining popularity in the United States. I’d heard about micro-houses and those didn’t seem that bad only seemingly hard to get used to. CNN Business released a short video on their Youtube channel this summer where one of these places is featured, in this case the company PodShare. Why not call these things Podhives since those people all seem to live like bees? Here, I’ll let the video speak for itself while I mix myself a stiff one;

Notice how Stephen, one of the “podsharers,” or worker-drone as I’d like to call him said people have mentioned to him that they find his way of life dystopian. He brushes away the concerns of those people by saying “don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it.” Stephen, I will knock it before I try it, there are prison cells in the western world that look like a sultan’s palace next to your honeycomb cell.

The video ends with the CEO of PodShare, Elvina Beck. Who ironically enough is originally from the Soviet Union. She wants to fulfill some sort of a communist objective with PodShare. Her opening statement of, “…like the idea of the government giving you everything in a communist state, what if you could subscribe to a housing membership and have all your needs met…” Sorry to break it to you Elvina but people in the Soviet Union had to pay for goods and services just like anywhere else in the world and all their needs certainly weren’t met.

The video doesn’t mention whether Elvina lives in one of her pods. Chances are as a CEO of PodShare, which has five locations in the USA and charges 1,200 dollars a month per pod she makes a comfortable enough living to get her own place. She says at the end that she hopes PodShare will help normalize rent prices. Yet all I can see PodShare doing is squeezing more and more people into already overcrowded cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. Thus, ramping up the prices even higher. I want people that live in cities where these PodShare locations are popping up to fight for actual housing reform, not to contribute to the problem.

18. 9. 19

It’s a strange and unpleasant to log back into this website. However, it’s unpleasant in a good way, like scratching a bad itch.

It is a new era, the end of a decade.

I wonder what the coming decade will give to this world. Will we see 10 years of great human achievement or will we fall to the level of caveman like beasts. With total war and wanton destruction our only forseeable future.

I hope my voice, as small as it is means something. For a world without the small voices is a lonely one.

 

 

Poem: Frozen City

Snowed in streets and frosted glass,
all that is spread out before me.
Would that it washed away en masse,
or at the very least, out to sea.

Yet the people wear it nonetheless,
a sign of fortitude or madness?
I would rather choose minor stress,
and find a place less festered with drabness.

Image: (Luke Bubb)

Still Hating It: Cellphones

I just can’t stand these things but I know I could never live without them, they are just too convenient. I don’t like how they’re fucking up our culture though. Selfies, Instagram, hashtags and loud calls on the bus are but a few things I find annoying as hell. Especially the loud calls on the bus. Seriously, at least turn off the fucking speaker function on your cellphone and talk into it like a normal person. You fucking animal! People were perfectly capable of living their lives without these things before and I like to think that they were probably happier for it.

And if I ever catch one of you motherfuckers that’s constantly vaping on Line 1, I’ll shove that thing all the way down your throat, press the button and end your life in the last “dank cloud” you’ll ever blow in your life. 

Still Hating It: Snow

Seriously, fuck snow. I’ve been more or less confined to my building since Sunday because of this pure bullshit from the heavens. I shit you not when I say that I almost got impaled by a foot-long icicle downtown today. Why couldn’t Ingólfur Arnarson find the Canary Islands instead of this desolate rock in the North-Atlantic. I know bitching about the weather is pointless since it’s uncontrollable, but still, fuck snow. Summer can fuck off too, but that’s a topic for later.

The Starbucks Marxist

The Starbucks Marxist tweets out #ResistCapitalism on his made in China Iphone. He does not care that they were made by people who live under a Communist regime which exploits their labor.

The Starbucks Marxist wears trendy clothes advertised by the big corporations. He is blind to this hypocrisy just as he is blind with his politics (and fashion sense, I might add).

The Starbucks Marxist preaches the glories of Communism from the comfort of his privately owned home, on his privately owned computer he bought with salary he collected from a privately owned corporation he chooses to work for.

Please, don’t be a Starbucks Marxist. If you want to preach a socialist revolution, at least get your own principles straight and practice what you preach. #WhereAreTheRealCommies?

My thoughts on Trump shunning the WHCA Dinner

President Trump has come under a lot of fire by the mainstream media recently as he chose to shun the traditional White House correspondents dinner. Personally, I think it is fantastic that Trump chose to ignore the dinner since it has for the past decades drifted away from its intended purpose of raising money for scholarships in journalism studies and has turned into a complete farce.

In fact the White House correspondents dinner of today has devolved into a who’s who of top White House officials, corporate media lobbyists and celebrity guests. Including Trump himself in 2011, for example. The liberals of today decried Trump for refusing to attend, calling it a break of tradition and a sign of Trumps hostility to the press.

Frankly, the dinner should simply be abolished. It is a sign of corruption to have the media cozy up to the government and getting their cases heard to anyone in power that will lend them an ear. Trump’s refusal to attend is perfectly in line with his anti-lobbyist agenda he campaigned on.

Everybody is Hitler

It is becoming hard to keep track who is and who is not Hitler these days. It seems that every other politician in the USA and Europe is now Hitler and that their supporters are “literally Hitler” as well. This is just an example of PC gone mad and the left beginning to decry everything it sees as Hitler in their post Trump mania.
If Trump, Le Pen, Farage and Wilders are now Hitler we are going to start running out of politicians to call Hitler soon. My guess is that soon enough the left wing of today will start decrying their own champions as Hitler and white supremacists pretty soon. They already did it with Canada’s Trudeau which left me speechless but on second thought not exactly surprised.

I will probably get called Hitler for pointing this out, but then again it is so watered down of an insult these days that I do not really care.

Poem: Picking up the pieces.

Forgive me my past transgressions,
my heart was not used to love. 
Now my mind is filled with questions,
of what I was once part of.

Will my humor ever recover?
and restore it’s former lively state.
Or will I in this darkness take cover,
and to heartbreak capitulate.

I hope I can pick up the pieces,
and try to find love again.
Hopefully my spirit increases,
and my love of life, I will retain.

The beginning of a novel?

Hey guys, just thought I’d share something I’ve been working on today. It’s the beginning of the idea of a concept (lol) for a novel I hope to one day publish. I know some of you are more talented than me when it comes to this and I’d love some feedback.

I woke up from the same sound that had roused me for the past two months. The noise of the people working the morning shift scraping and shoveling the snow from the nearby gates. Occasionally one of them would hit the chain link fence and let off a metallic rattle. Not exactly a pleasant alarm clock but it did its job. “Hey Stan, wake up and let’s get moving I’m freezing my fucking ass off” Cooper bellowed. “I’m already up, give me a few seconds.” I replied and zipped open my sleeping bag. The stale freezing air of the tent hit me instantly, it had been unusually cold lately and not getting any warmer. I fumbled around for my clothes, the aviator jacket Cooper gave me, the pants from home I’d padded with newspapers and my beat-up sneakers. I zipped open the tent, stepped outside and looked at Cooper. As per usual he was wearing his old army jacket, two sets of jeans and a giant pair of homemade boots. “Took you long enough dipshit, if we move out now we’ll barely make it in time.”