Archive for November, 2009

I thought I’d heard it all but it seems I wasn’t quite prepared for two of the funniest things I’d ever hope to hear.

First was a report entitled, Bank boss says ‘we do God’s work’, posted on ABC News. It appears that we may have misjudged the powers that be by incorrectly believing that these elite players were merely in it for themselves, caring only about the tidy little nest eggs that the banking profession bestows. However, according to the CEO of Goldman Sachs they are indeed doing the will of God, while being compensated quite handsomely for the privilege. How could we the public have gotten it so wrong, thinking that these bankers were blood sucking scum, albeit, dressed in finery, were really angels in disguise? Yeah right! The hide of this asshole. The absolute arrogance and malice. Did he even stop to question the absurdity of such a remark before he put his foot in it. There are people who have lost homes, jobs and suffered a tremendous amount of anxiety, all because of the greed of a few. The very bankers who this arsehole is extolling as God’s very own are the same lot who caused the absolute mess the world wound up in with the Global Financial Crisis.

To then have some high flying banking executive rub salt in the wounds by declaring the nobility of raking in millions upon millions in bonuses, while the rest of us work the no less harder for what amounts to lunch money, compared to said bonuses, is appalling and telling of the mindset that is at the top of pyramid. It’s this sort of arrogance that does nothing but invoke further levels of suspicion and anger towards the capitalist system that promises everything yet delivers nothing. If we weren’t cynical enough already, then surely having the CEO of Goldman Sach – Lloyd Blankfein gloating about what an important social role he and his ilk play in the world, while filling his purse with excess amounts of money, ought to certainly raise an eyebrow while our narrow little eyes look to the banking sector with growing concern.

Perhaps I’m a little hasty in condemning Lloyd, because in all honesty, I’m basing my criticism upon a short article and have not seen the offending interview in London’s Sunday Times, but it’s hard to imagine when one uses the term “God’s work” in a sentence that it can be taken out of context. However, maybe it is. Because at the end of the day it is fairly meaningless statement, precisely because we all do God’s work if we’re to believe in such a deity but when it is coming from the mouth of someone who lives in an entirely different class, who does not experience the same struggle as someone at the lower end of the stick, it becomes rather offensive and arrogant. After all, Jesus did mention something about the rich and camels going through the eye of a needle and how it relates to doing “God’s work”!

Obviously Mr Lloyd Blankfein has taken from the prosperity church gospel and equated wealth as the direct measure of one’s worth in the eyes of the Lord. But I guess Mr Blankfein forgot about one of the pillars of Christian faith – Charity! It’s one thing to justify the obscene wealth lining one’s pockets with imagining the great social services one’s work creates, while revelling in the self serving importance of leading and paving the way, so that other’s may pick the fruits in a similar fashion; if only we tried that little bit harder. But it is all together a different story to then suggest that by doing one’s job somehow correlates with being in on God’s divine plan. It just reeks of narcissism and everyone knows it. Except maybe Lloyd. But that’s one of the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder, now isn’t it.

It’s little wonder then, that Lloyd rather sadly states, “I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,” probably thinking it’s because of envy or some other such nonsense when in truth, it is because, You Sir, are a tool! A little humility and a little more compassion would probably endear him more favourably right about now, but once one has likened himself as one doing “God’s work” there isn’t a great deal you can do to redeem yourself, other than doing a complete 180 degree turn and really doing something akin to God’s work. There’s probably a couple of billion people who could do with a little charity and since it’s coming up to Christmas, why not start by donating that tidy little bonus to a good cause? “What!” “No!” Yeah I didn’t think so!

Anyway I did mention two the funniest things I’ve ever heard, happened this week. The other, is our blessed little brat. Good old Britney Spears resurfaced in the media. She apparently was ever so distraught, amid allegations that fans left her Circus show because of her lip syncing. Ha! Ha!Ha! What the fuck! Lip syncing at a Britney Spears concert. Who’d have ever thought! Such sacrilege! But it’s pretty funny that fans would leave the concert three songs into the Perth gig. After paying 200 dollars you’d expect to at least stick it out and watch the circus unfold. It must have been pretty bad. Then again, you’d have to pay me 200 dollars to go and even then I couldn’t guarantee I’d last more than one song, before I went completely insane. But heres a tip and its free Britney. Just fucking sing. Keep those tweens happy even if we Gen Xer’s all know you suck!

It’s pretty funny that I paid good money to install Windows 7 and indeed paid far too much for the privilege, if one could even call it a privilege, to then not experiment or play with my new toy, apart from the odd looky here and there. It’s essentially collecting dust on my laptop. The problem is that it’s installed on a laptop that I don’t even need and only really use when I’m away from home visiting the folks down south. If I’d installed it on my desktop, it would then get a daily workout but I couldn’t be fucked upgrading my desktop rig because of the huge investment in time required, frigging around backing up files and reinstalling drivers and software, when I reinstalled Vista only a few months back.

The irony is that Ubuntu just released an updated OS called Karmic Koala which I didn’t hesitate in downloading and installing on my main rig, with minimum fussing about, backing up shit, because Linux has the ability to install the home folder on a different partition, which contains all the documents, music and video files, and comes with all the basic computing packages, so formatting and installing a new version is a breeze compared with Windows. Ironic because it’s free and because I’ve spent the last three days playing around with it rather than it laying dormant. To be fair, I’ve had to reinstall software but it’s all located pretty much in the one place, so I didn’t really have to go to too much trouble finding it. There are some things that aren’t working but that’s the fun with Linux, trying to find solutions. Although after a little while it does start to become a little tiresome and frustrating and I end up going back to familiar Windows. I’d like to be able to utilise Linux as my operating system of choice at home, but I always seem to get stuck with my limited knowledge and the limitations of the software, which is more than capable for a good portion of things but for me, Windows still has the edge in usability and functionality.

Because Windows is the more familiar I find it easier to operate and because it has the advantage of being the most used operating system it thus has the greatest hardware support, making it just that much more less frustrating getting things to work. Like right now Karmic Koala is still giving me grief in video playback due to my choice in graphics cards, video tearing using ATI hardware and installing the drivers guarantees that video playback will flicker with horizontal lines. I have no idea if it it can be fixed and it’s a problem I’ve had over numerous releases. Another problem is that because I’ve wanted to be legal with my codecs and purchased the Fluendo codec pack some wmv files won’t play and although a solution is to install the gstreamer-bad codecs it is disappointing that the legal way doesn’t work. I’d log a support ticket but because the files are videos I purchased there is no samples I could provide rto them if requested.

A part of the reason why I’ve purchased software for my Linux install is that I like spending money (read wasting money – as witnessed with my Win 7 purchase) and because I kind of hope that if enough people buy software, then major developers might become more interested in developing software that is easy to use and familiar and that it may pave the way for hardware developers to be more inclined to develop drivers and stuff as well. I’m probably dreaming but it would be kind of nice to switch operating systems without drama and for both user experiences to be as enjoyable and painless as each other.

So right now I’m not going to ditch Windows but maybe sometime in the future it may very well be a possibilty. Anway this post was posted using BloGTK 1.1 instead of the usual Windows Live Writer. So one small step for progression 🙂