There’s never not a time when matters can’t avoid seeming to half-call for such extremes.

(Sorry about this image.)

Dear diary,

I’m sad because I haven’t had time to write here lately. I’ve been busy with chores. I do not live in a palm tree that stands at the edge of space, where one can simply perch and sing all day. I live in a world of warfare and finance. That means that, no matter how pretty my song sounds, there’s always a soldier nearby waiting to slay me or jail me, if I do not produce sums of money for the owners of the various phenomena that sustain our paradise. It’s like a game that we play.

Money’s an interesting thing. Nobody knows what it is, but it’s super important. It’s kinda like God, but it’s not God: for, altho they might print the word “God” on money, not even bankers would say that money is God. Plus, like I said, everyone wants money; people even convince themselves that they need money; whereas nobody wants or needs God — that’s why God’s so attractive.

Now, rumor has it that many societies have used money to help their economy spin (the economy is like a top: it must be kept spinning, or else it falls over), but not all societies have been able to generate billionaires. Billionaires are the chef-d’oeuvre of the economy. All the people who keep pumping their money thru it so that the economy spins — those little people are like leaves of grass (some are even like weeds, in the sense that they are unwanted) — they’re like plants that are just plain green; all they do is perform photosynthesis. But the billionaire is like a plant that has flowered: look how beautiful the shapes & colors of its blossom are, & how delectable its scent. Look at the insects that it attracts. (Note their affinity to extraterrestrials.)

So, just as there is nothing more desirable for a country than to have a spinning economy, there is nothing more desirable for an economy than to proliferate billionaires. After one’s first billionaire flourishes, it’s no great deal to keep producing more & more billionaires, until one’s entire solar system is full of ultra-wealthy idlers, and everyone can retire into the harmony of intergalactic warfare (for you’ve gotta find new employees somewhere, now that everyone’s a successful entrepreneur; and the next obvious frontier is deep space, where the aliens reside, who we can safely assume are inferior enough to enslave for the ensuing centuries, until the unthinkable happens and they prove even more conniving than us humanoids), for someone’s gotta do the daily cooking, cleaning, and cuckolding; plus we’ll need a lot of bricklayers to help fortify our ice castle, once the sun burns out.

I say, to become a billionaire, you need to be born with a certain rare instinct: you need to possess the impulse to get back more than you spent on any particular action. If you spend one unit of energy, you MUST nab two or more units of energy in return (preferably much, much more than just a doubling of your energy: if possible, triple or quadruple your original investment), otherwise you’ll never achieve billionaire-hood.

By the way, I don’t think I explained this crucial term yet, so I’ll put a simple definition right here: A billionaire is a being who has managed to hoard at least one billion units of a given item: in this case, energy packets endorsed by the Pantheon.

Let us now compare the posture of a billionaire to the posture of a loser. As I explained, a billionaire will always demand to snatch back more than he spent. Contrariwise, a loser will always spend without expecting any recompense: at the very best, a loser will receive much less than his investment; oftentimes a loser even intends willfully to forfeit the amount of energy spent on any action & simply write it off as a loss; hence his class-name: loser.

There have been many examples of both species, billionaire and loser, throughout U.S. history; and one could waste a lot of brain cells remembering various names and dates and facts, but I suggest saving your resources and just inscribing this simple rule-of-thumb upon a sticky note, then placing it at eye-level at your workstation as a reminder: All poets are losers. Real businessmen are billionaires.

Paul was determined to sail to Ephesus, as he would not spend the time in Asia, because Paul disliked Asia: thus from Miletus he sent a messenger to Ephesus, who told the elders of the church “I am come on Paul’s behalf; he wishes to tell you that he had intended to sail unto you, but now he would rather instead that you sail unto him.”
     And when the elders heard this, they packed up their belongings; then, as soon as they were come to Paul, he said unto them: “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’.”

(Acts of the Apostles 20:16-18, 35)

So that’s one loser quoting another. For it’s a very simple fact: If you give more than you receive, you are guaranteed to end up with less than you owned aforetime. You will gain zero return on your investment. No bank’s gonna offer you a starter loan with this type of business plan. Don’t be stupid.

Actually, the above example, which I translated from the Greek (so-called New) Testament, is NOT of one loser quoting another; for Paul has gained much: he’s got a winner’s instinct: I’m not sure if he was technically a billionaire, but with that attitude, I don’t see how he could continue long without eventually becoming one. Paul seems ready to burst into bloom. Note how he got his board members to sail to him, instead of having to pay for a ticket and sail to them; while simultaneously avoiding having to do any trade in Asia, where he would have undoubtedly suffered much loss, as their market is so competitive and they’re somewhat cannier than Wild Westerners.

“I grant that you’re decent salespeople; but for everything else, you really are big dweebs.”

—Officer Duke, from the film Wrong Cops (2013)

Now here’s a trickier example, from the end of section 14, in Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the
     first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.

Note how Mr. Whitman starts out the race quite smartly: “spending for vast returns” — THAT’s the spirit that I’m trying to advocate. But then Walt wimps out & loses big-league at the end: he demands no profit from the sky that he inherits, but simply “scatters it freely forever”. That’s a major loss. He’s gonna take a big hit on that one.

What you should do, when you own the sky, is divvy it up and sell the shares for top dollar. Sky is always going to be in demand, thus it’ll most likely accumulate in value; so, when I told you to sell it just now, I really should have said rent it out, for THEN you acquire the interest on everyone’s payments while still remaining the owner of the domain.

In short, whatever you do, DON’T follow the example of loser Walt, who just gives the heavens away for free.

Humans are ruthless: never forget that humans hate each other; they hate every thing that lives: every creature within which is the breath of life —

The wickedness of man is great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

Humankind will stop at nothing to crush you, once you show the slightest sign of weakness. That’s why it is smart to have a firm handshake. And don’t conceal weapons upon your person: display them proudly! Weapons are there to protect you, and to make you feared among men. If people accuse you of cruelty and selfishness, wear their disapproval as a badge of honor. Eventually, when you become the Sky God, you will be able to torment whoever was disloyal to you on the way up. You’ll have a vast supply of thunderbolts, but you can also invent strange plagues to frighten the populace.

No, I’m kidding; all those Sky God clichés are only bluster, intended to win over the more barbaric members of my audience. I do believe in winning, but one doesn’t need to become a jerk to do so. One can smile at people — that doesn’t cost much. And wear a nice suit.

I myself have lately fallen in love with this thing called “soft power”, which operates like so. Instead of bombing a village into submission, you go visit the place in person, get out of your boat and greet the leader with friendly warmth, offer a firm handshake and say:

“I see that you need all your crumbling infrastructure repaired. I will do that for you, out of the kindness of my heart. Zero charge. Are you game?”

And the leader will have no choice but to accept your proposal: he will sign the paperwork that declares his village to be a permanent ally of your own empire, while staring at the armaments that are prominently displayed on your uniform. Then, sometime in the future, when you need a favor of this leader, you can ring up his village on the telephone and say:

“Hi, this is Bryan, the supreme tyrant of the free universe; remember how you signed your soul over to me? Well I promise to finish some of the bridges that we started to build in your country, if you let us station a zillion soldiers on your farmland.”

Wow, just think about being able to flex that amount of muscle: You basically displaced his village’s entire source of agriculture, because he thinks that you’re on his side now. And consider that number of soldiers: a whole ZILLION. That’s even more than a billion. Think about what it’s like to become a zillionaire! Has anyone ever accomplished that hereto? I bet not. I bet we’ll be the first ones, after this next war. Cow cadavers and goat guts everywhere, and we’ll be bathing in banknotes. At that point, I’d even repair a couple of that dude’s bridges for free, just cuz we use the east & west thoroughfares to replenish our troops, and it’s cheaper to employ a combination of submarines & jeeps than it is to keep helicoptering in all our thugs. That’s a waste of fuel.

• Soldiers are folks whose situation at home is so desperate that they agree to become murderers for your empire.
• Policewomen are damsels whose situation is so desperate that they agree to bear arms for the local municipality.
• Security guards are gentlemen who’re so down on their luck that they’ve taken a job as a stormtrooper for a bank or mini-mall.

Any public executioner is basically a nun (a member of a religious community of damsels, especially a cloistered one, living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience) whose faith in eternal life is so strong that she agrees to pull the “on/off” lever of the electric chair, in obedience to justice.

Executioners also traditionally worked the trap door of the gallows, during hangings. And they often did the duty of chopping heads, by way of operating the guillotine. The latter type of professionals are pretty much a defunct group nowadays, however, because there are so many billionaires that it’s hard to find anyone needy enough to operate the machinery. A lot of the vengeance factories are dormant, in fact.

Here in the USA, self-slaughter is illegal; that’s why I love this place — attempting suicide is punishable by death. No joke: but the reason is NOT that one’s life is precious, only the taking of it is: You yourself may not decide to perform such a thing, only our bureaucrats were granted that divine right. And abortion is likewise not your concern, whoever you are. The starting and ending points of any given life are for legislators to hash out. Every fetus is a potential slaver; and there could be extraterrestrials in some galaxy out there who are as of yet unowned.

This entry is becoming too uplifting; at least it feels that way to me. I wanna break from this hamster-wheel of bliss, but it’s all I know. (Maybe I should use this realization as a conclusion, after adding some textual filler...)

I wonder why the poor, desperate folks who work in the sweatshops that manufacture bombs don’t just wait till their boss isn’t looking and replace the explosive innards of their product with confetti. Would that be possible? Most likely not, on account of quality inspections:

The overseers don’t scrutinize the contents every single bomb that the assembly line constructs, but every zillionth bomb is cracked open by an examiner — they tap the bomb against the rim of an oversize bowl, just like an egg — and its incendiaries splash out like a yolk, and the examiner squints down at them to see if these viscera have been properly installed: he looks to make sure that they are exploding, and that the fire is the proper hue and temperature. Now, were this inspector to open a bomb that is filled with confetti, he’d see nothing but small pieces of colored paper, and no flames at all — very little ferocity. Thus, with a scowl, he would press his rubber stamp upon the shell of the device in order to label it “DEFECTIVE”; & this determination would additionally necessitate re-inspection for the entire quantity of bombs produced that day. For the whole lot might be duds. You don’t wanna fly your ship over someone’s motherland and drop an object that doesn’t explode, or one that opens up and spills out nothing lethal — that would be as unintelligent as celebrating the wedding of pacifists, or attending a birthday party for a child not even old enough to serve in the military.

I know that I think about this all the time, and that I mention it too often; but, seriously, I can’t get over the fact that humankind once knew nothing beyond the art of fisticuffs. Women would burst from their houses, letting the screen door slam behind them loudly (scaring whatever household pets might be trying to nap nearby), and they would meet in the street, causing traffic to stop: and car horns would keep honking while these ladies would grab each other by the bonnet, and yank and tug each other to death.

But then swords were invented, which allowed homeowners to strike each other at a comfortable distance. This eliminated any need of encroaching upon one’s neighbor’s personal space. Before the birth of metal blades, fighters would be required to get within arm’s reach of each another. Now, with the help of these rusty sabers, they can stand back another few meters and still strike the body of their nemesis, which often pierces thru the skin. An opponent injured in this way will then proceed to bleed to death in the street, or else die of a tetanus infection — either way, a utility vehicle will need to come and shovel them off to the curbside, so that traffic may return to jamming on its own accord.

Now, from fistfights between mothers in the barroom to swordplay among their offspring, we arrive at the machinegun. This new tool allows a priest to strike his accusers at a far greater remove than was formerly required when iron swords were the norm.

The reason I’m ending like this, by reviewing the history of God’s gifts to humankind (for it was God who gave us these lobes of our brains that we cherish) is that I wanted to speculate on the future. From fists to swords to automatic guns to… what? What weapon do you think we should conjure up next?

I suggest something like a long-distance remote for a TV, like a channel switcher; but instead of just changing whatever show you’re watching on your favorite network, this device sends out an invisible death-ray that kills your target at any distance whatsoever — you don’t even need to be close enough to see the thing you wish to annihilate: you just aim and click the heart-shaped emoticon; then watch the image on the device’s telescopic monitor spaz & collapse. So you can wave this thing all around in the continuum of spacetime, and keep clicking the button and killing things: birds, wolves, hated enemies, evil husbands, aliens from foreign realms... The sky’s the limit. Or rather, not even the outermost spaces are the limit, cuz the range on this weapon is limitless; there’s no further need to innovate anything better: this is the killing tool of killing tools, able to reach beyond the infinite. You can kill angels & demons; you can even kill that Almighty God whom you impersonated in the paragraph above. Cuz time is as circular as distance (“Line in nature is not found; / Unit and universe are round” as Emerson’s Uriel always sez), and if a wealthy Hyperborean like myself walks far enough northward on Planet Earth, I end up in the global south, in poverty and starving; moreover, I’m pregnant. Likewise, if you (the reader) aim your shooter into the far past, you can destroy even deities who haven’t arrived yet, like the Second Coming of Christ. And when there’s no one on the screen, if you (again, when I use the pronoun “you”, I’m genuinely and directly speaking of YOU, my gentle reader; for I would never dare to do such a thing myself) I say, if you continue hammering on the button, even when nothing appears upon the screen, you annihilate all the unseen beings that populate the void between visible atoms. So that’s a lot of bang for your buck. If I were you, I’d go buy a couple this instant: Remote control death beams with unlimited potency. Get a discount on your order, by mentioning this blog, while supplies last.

MORAL

Those who live in X dream of X.