A Pill For This and A Pill For That

So, I guess obesity is now officially considered a disease.

Personally, I think obesity is nothing more than a SYMPTOM.

A symptom of malnutrition. A symptom of a deliberate, slow motion poisoning of the populace. A symptom of a purposeful, gradual and incremental genocide. A lucrative and profitable fattening of the human cattle for slaughter.

THEY have been deliberately fattening we the sheeple, confined in their infernal feedlot for slaughter for quite some time now. More and more are beginning to notice something is not quite right, so our feedlot managers must now come up with a new way for the useless eaters to accept their current, artificially constructed conditions rather than figure out the only thing they really need to do is step outside of the barricades of the feedlot...

...since the only thing that really keeps most within it's shit-filled, crowded confines, are the lies, deceptions and delusions THEY have constructed in our minds with their mass media driven propaganda, brainwashing and control of the mainstream narrative of conventional wisdom.

But no matter how many begin to wake up and see all the lies and propaganda for the deceptions that they are, the sad reality is that the majority of the great multitudes will remain oblivious. Most are too drugged out of their minds on the various versions of Soma Big Pharma deals out to the Medical-Insurance-Healthcare complex for lucrative Insurance overbilling.

Think I exaggerate? 70% of Americans take Big Pharma Smack.

Researchers find that nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and more than half receive at least two prescriptions...

...antibiotics, antidepressants and painkiller opioids are the most common prescriptions given to Americans.

Twenty percent of U.S. patients were also found to be on five or more prescription medications

Nearly one in four women ages 50 to 64 were found to be on an antidepressant, with 13 percent of the overall population also on antidepressants.

Seventeen percent of people in the study were being prescribed antibiotics, and 13 percent were on painkilling opioids.

Apparently, when it comes to pharmaceuticals, every hour is happy hour in our Brave New World Order.

And this doesn't even account for the number of people who take over-the-counter medications in addition to the prescriptions doled out daily by the Big Pharma cartel.

As a whole, women and older adults received the most prescription drugs.

Antidepressants and opioids were most common among young and middle-aged adults.

The percentage of people who took at least one prescription drug in the past month increased from 44 percent in 1999-2000 to 48 percent in 2007-08, the Mayo Clinic reports.

Expenditures on prescription drugs reached $250 billion in 2009, and accounted for 12 percent of total personal health care expenditures.

According to the CDC, the percent of persons using at least one prescription drug in the past month increased nearly 50 percent between 2007 and 2010.

And the researchers said prescription drug spending will only increase in the future.

Right now, we are living in the time of the Palm-Zombie Apocalypse.

Should any event or collapse of civil society occur, it will be a matter of days before the Big Pharma addicts begin to act in desperation borne of involuntary withdrawal.

That's when we'll see the real Zombie Apocalypse occur.

Do you find these thoughts troubling?

Don't worry, there's a pill for that sort of anxiety.

Just do as your told and take your regularly programmed dosage advised by your Medical professional, and all will be better.

Red pill, blue pill, purple pill...It matters not.

 The truth is that THEY want you to think the answers you seek is always to be found in a PILL. A dosage of maintenance medication that will make you feel momentarily better about your dreary existence as a human resource, a niche market consumer and a debt serf in our Corporatist economy. Once it wears off, and your symptoms caused by your feedlot diet and lifestyle return, it's time to take another pill.

When the bottle runs out, it's then time to order a refill, continually racking up an increasingly profitable and lucrative insurance bill. Why, there's no cure to be found in changing your diet and your lifestyle!

Those sorts of crazy ideas are nothing more than the fevered delusions of fanatical cult members!

Champagne Tastes on a Beer Budget

During the heady days of the 00's housing bubble, I was in a business-to-business sales job. Before that bubble burst, times were good, optimism reigned, and I lived it up like so many other fools living beyond their means via debt financing.

Buying shit I didn't need, with money I didn't have.

When the bubble went bust, so did my financial situation. I could no longer service my debt. Bankruptcy soon followed.

That was nearly four years ago, and I'm in a far better place today, financially. Much poorer in terms of income, but much wiser in knowledge and experience. I've learned to make-do, repair, recycle, reuse, and focus on the finer points of frugality. I am no longer in any debt save for a few grand in student loans that could not be discharged in bankruptcy.

Of course, back when I took out those student loans in the 90's, you COULD discharge them in bankruptcy...then Dubya signed the law during his second term making student loans ineligible for bankruptcy discharge.

Not that I had any intentions of doing so...I was a good little debt serf for the banksters. I made all my payments on time for close to a decade, until I hit the point where my commissioned pay check was zero and only my meager base salary was the only income I had...until my company I worked at for 12 years went belly up and I got laid off. I reached the point where it was a choice between either making my credit card and auto loan payments or paying the rent, buying food and keeping the basic utilities on.

That's what I get for voting. Consider my lesson learned, and my consequences just. Thanks to the borrow-and-spend RepubliCON warmonger and original bagman for the TOO BIG TO FAIL TARP-heist that I cast my ballot for (not once, but twice!), student loans are now like herpes.

 

During the heady days of irrational exuberance and a six figure income, I lived it up like a Rockefeller.

Oh Virtuous Vice!

I developed a taste for the finer vices of life. Single Malt Scotches and Kentucky Straight Bourbons aged for 10 or more years. Premium cigars. Expensive, boutique micro-brewed beers. Organic gourmet coffee.  I used to only put 92 Octane gas in my cars and motorcycle. I ordered every pay per view MMA events from PRIDE Fighting Championships and the UFC.

I would regularly eat out at restaurants, and thought nothing of ringing up $100+ meal and bar tabs around town. Movies, concerts, raves, nightclubs, weekend trips to the neighbor islands and regular visits to California and Las Vegas to visit friends and families. Multiple vacations to Europe and Australia. I built up a moderate collection of guns, knives and guitars, as well as an extensive collection of high end whiskey. I used to buy a bottle of $30-$80 single malt or premium Bourbon or Irish Malt every pay day. I used to have subscriptions to a number of magazines and newspapers. All the premium channels on cable TV. I used to buy the latest game consoles, newest releases of video games, and hundreds of DVD's and CD's.

Then I discovered the Paleo Cult on teh Interwebz, and I turned my expensive tastes in dining towards obtaining the highest quality foods I could find and really getting into the joy of cooking from scratch. Grass-fed meats, organic sausages, fresh-caught, raw fish. Organic dairy. Grass fed butter from New Zealand. Highest quality Olive and Macadamia nut oils. Artisanal cheeses. Organic produce. Free range eggs and poultry, all bought from upscale, high end grocery stores and deli's around town. The gains I made from ceasing to eat out at fast food, franchise chains and upscale restaurants was easily offset by the higher standard of groceries I was buying.

I was a quintessential, 21st Century human resource in Corporate America and a consummate consumer typical of the times. I was living high on the hog, clueless about the economic hard times that were about to come. I was still drunk on the idea of the American Dream (called so because you have to be asleep to believe it!), and under the delusion that my career was on a perpetually upward trajectory. After all, for 8 years after I graduated from college, my commissions increased every year. I thought that was just the natural career path that comes with obtaining a college degree and working as a white collar sales and marketing cog in the American corporate machine. Little did I realize that I was simply getting my small share of the bubble mal-investments, and that I was blowing it all away under the mistaken notion that I would be earning even more of it in the future.

About the only thing I didn't do when I was in the heyday of bubble excess that many of my Generation X cohorts did, was sign up for a mortgage to try and realize the dream of Home Ownership. I came within inches of signing on the dotted line for a 3 bed/2 bath/2 car garage house in an upper middle class tract of Hawaiian suburbia...but I got cold feet and walked away. The idea of 30 years of debt and the 5 year adjustable rate scared me too much. That decision was based on nothing more than irrational fear (at the time I thought is was irrational...lolzolzolol). That ended up being the smartest choice I ever made, back in my blue pill days of financial and economic naivete. I had more than enough of a monthly average income at the time to afford the payments. I would have made it to about 4 years before the bubble went pop and my commissions went to zilch.

I guess the most memorable and meaningful lessons we learn, are the ones learned the hard way.

Life has become much simpler now.

I no longer order Pay-Per-View events or movies. I got rid of all my premium cable tv channels. I downgraded my smart phone to a dumb phone and pay the minimum monthly plan with only a small allotment of phone call minutes. I no longer talk for more than 2-3 minutes at a time on the phone so as to avoid going over my monthly minutes. I no longer eat out at restaurants, save for very infrequent and special occasions. About once a month, I take the family out to a Vietnamese noodle shop for some bone soup  (high quality nutrition at fast food prices.) I no longer shop at deli's and upper end grocery marts. I buy most of my produce from the local farmer's market. I also found it much cheaper to raise a flock of free range hens rather than pay a premium for free range, organic eggs at the grocery stores.

I cancelled all my magazine and newspaper subscriptions. I only use 84 Octane gas. I got rid of my motorcycle and two of my four vehicles. I set up a routine for doing my errands so that I do all that needs to be done on one round trip to town for a single week to save on gas. I haven't bought a gun or a guitar in 5 years. I stopped going to the shooting range on a regular basis (ammo has gotten way expensive ever since Obama got elected!).

Nevertheless, one thing I really got from all that, was the proverbial champagne tastes, of which I can no longer afford to regularly indulge. Adjustments have been made...but there are certain things I will not compromise on. The behaviors have been modified, but I've reached a point where I'd rather go without than settle for cheaper substitutes.

Life's too short to eat bad food, drink shitty booze, smoke crappy leaf and  watch bad TV and movies.

Rather, I've become more moderate and circumspect in my consumption. In this regard, my favorite corporate multi-national cartel, Costco, has been the only thing keeping my expensive tastes for quality foods and vice sated.

High quality microbrews in bulk ($10-$14 a six pack elsewhere, $20-$22 a case at Costco). I now almost never drink more than 3 of those in a single day. I used to easily drink 2 cases of beer or more a week....now, I stretch one case over 2 weeks. While there are economic considerations driving this behavior, I've also become conscious and conscientious of the difference between alcohol use and abuse.

I no longer buy Single Malt Scotch, unless I come across a ridiculous sale (I once came across three bottles of Dalwhinnie 15 year Single Malt at a clearance price of $25 - typically a $55 bottle. I bought all three). Almost all the bottles in my collection have been drank below the halfway point, and I rarely open them up anymore to have a dram. That's only on special occasions now. I stick to Kentucky Straight Bourbons and Rye Whiskeys, and even with that, I typically only buy the cheaper/mid-range end of that particular classof spirits, and usually only drink only a dram or two in any given day.

Put this same Whiskey in a different bottle and you'll pay twice as much...for almost the exact same juice.

But even the price of Bourbon has been on the rise as of late. Again, thank the heavens for Costco - they now carry Kirkland brand Bourbon, which is really just Jim Beam's small batch collection of Baker's Bourbon sold in bulk to Costco. $20 for 1 liter...whereas a 750 ml bottle of Baker's will run you twice that price at specialty liquor stores. Great Whiskey at a great price. If I could afford it, I'd prefer premium brands like Pappy Van Winkle or Old Weller Antique, but the Kirkland stuff at that price is more than good enough to satisfy.

Mexico produces so much more than unskilled and undocumented labor...

Same goes for the Kirkland brand tequila - it may be cheap, but the quality is still there.  You can get a 1.75 liter bottle of  100% puro de Agave blanco, smooth enough to drink straight and excellent for mixing,  for the same price of a 750 ml bottle of typical mixto rotgut tequila sold everywhere else. (I don't always drink tequila...but when I do, it's NOT Jose Cuervo - "silver" or "gold.") I'd prefer Cazadores, Herradura or Patron, but again, the Kirkland brand is some damned fine Agave Azul, and at that price, a true bargain.

Another great offering from Costco is artisanal cheeses in bulk. I've seen the same types of cheeses at half the size for twice the price at most deli's and grocery stores. Oh, and while I still buy organic free range meat at the farmer's market, I do also buy the cheaper factory farmed fare from Costco as well. Bacon, sausage, ham, salami, etc. I wish I could afford to buy higher end meats from Whole Foods, but I've resolved to not let perfect be the enemy of good.

Processed, Factory Farmed Meats: Paleo Cult Heresy!

In those cases, I make sure and cook the cheap meats in high quality fats (Kerry Gold Butter and Macadamia Nut Oils) to at least mitigate the poorer nutritional quality of the cheaper meats. Where I used to exclusively eat free range, organic/grass fed meats, that now makes up only 50% of the meat we consume in the Galt household.

If there's one thing I never skimp on when it comes to food, it's with buying the high quality fats.
Nobody round these parts beats the prices Costco's offers Extra Virgin Coconut and Olive oils.

Another innovation with Costco here in Hawaii has been the recent installation of fresh coffee roasting machines in several of the outlets around the island. I used to pay close to $20 a pound. for organic coffees from a boutique coffee shop in downtown Honolulu. The highest quality beans from Sumatra, New Guinea, Tanzania, Guatemala, Venezuela, Jamaica and Kona. I love me some high end coffee in the morning. But now, Costco fresh roasts organic Sumatra beans right there in the store and sells it in 2.5 lbs. bags for $16...and that fresh roast is unbeatable! Every time I buy a bag and throw it in the car, by the time I get home, my entire vehicle smells like fresh roasted java.

I've paid triple the amount for more gourmet coffees like Organic Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain...and none of them ever tasted as good as that Organic Sumatra that had been roasted within a day or two of purchase. Even still, with that excellent bulk pricing for premium grade beans from a certified organic farm in Indonesia,  with the economic downturn and personal financial decimation, I still cut back from a 4-5 cups a day routine -- always with a healthy dollop of organic heavy whipping cream -- to now only 2 cups a day, the first black, the second with organic half-and-half. I make that 2.5 lbs. bag last two weeks...just like the beer.

Now I didn't start out writing this post to turn it into an endorsement for one of our modern day equivalents to the East India Company...but sadly, the fact remains - America is a Corporatist-Mercantilist-Fascist State. We the sheeple must procure at least some of our food and drink and other consumable products from one of the mutli-national corporate cartel's...we don't really have any other choice - especially when comparable goods that are locally made can cost up to 10 times as much as the likes of Costco can offer, due to it's cartel advantages in procuring premium products on the global market at discount rates for bulk distribution. It is what it is. You don't have to go to Costco. I'm sure there are other "wholesale clubs" and bulk warehouse distribution establishments that offer similar premium products at discount bulk rates. YMMV and all that.

 I buy local wherever and whenever I can...but you're just not going to find Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Mexican Pure Agave Tequila, nor French, Dutch, Norweigan, Italian or Wisconsin cheeses in most locales either. We live in a globalized word of trade whether we like it or not. May as well enjoy the nominal benefits of artisanal produce and products from all over the world the cartel provides.

Is THIS corn on the cob considered "paleo?"

Another modification in my indulgences in vice, has been to change my recreational use of tobacco. I quit smoking cigars on a weekly basis and save 'em only for special occasions...like once a month - at most. If I feel like indulging in some good tobacco, I now have a puff on my cheap ass Missouri Meerschaum pipes with some bulk pipe tobacco. You can buy high end pipe tobacco in bulk from teh Interwebz every bit as potent and flavorful as premium cigars, but at a fraction of the cost. I'm even finding out that I like premium Balkan and English blends, cakes, flakes, twists and rolls better than many of the premium cigars I used to smoke several times a week.

For the price of 2 mid-range, premium cigars, I can buy 4 ounces of high end pipe weed. I'm not a member of the Brotherhood of the Briar, and I don't plan on joining anytime soon. I just don't want to spend the money on a high end briar wood pipe ($50-$500), when the $4 hardwood and corn cob pipes are perfectly adequate and satisfactory for smoking good quality tobacco at far cheaper prices than my old cigar indulgences.





When it comes to making due during The Return of the Great Depression, sacrifices have been made, corners have been cut, compromises and foregoing past indulgences have been the norm. But there is a certain point I'm willing to go before the small joys in life are no longer worth the money that could be saved by eating, drinking and smoking substandard fare. PRIORITIES, PEOPLE!

Stay thirsty my friends.

That Whistle Got Blown A Long Time Ago

By now, everyone out on these fringes of teh Interwebz has heard about NSA agent Edward Snowden, who fled Hawaii to Hong Kong and then blew the whistle:

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."

This is news? A shocking revelation?

Not to those of us who are "conspiracy theory kooks."


May 4, 2010 - We Know Who You Are

Welcome to the 21st Century Panopticon.

This plenary will discuss an inter-networked communication infrastructure that could facilitate the creation of a modern surveillance society. The name given to the criminal justice/national security project is “information fusion centers.” Fusion centers are an amalgamation of commercial and public sector data for the purpose of optimizing the collection, analysis, and sharing of personal information. The Department of Homeland Security’s $380 million in funding has created over 40 information fusion centers in the United States.

Friday, November 5, 2010 - The True Purpose for Obamacare: The American Dang'an

If you read the Obamacare bill, and you pay close attention, you'll see that the new bill calls for a consolidation of personal information and documentation into a single, accessible record.

May 6, 2011 - Americans, Everything You Do Is Monitored

Whatever the case, it's clear that almost everything we do, whether it's in the privacy of our own homes or on public streets, can be tracked, monitored, and logged.

As technology improves and the internet interconnects even more nodes, the information collected by the public, private and personal sectors will be further aggregrated, cross referenced and analyzed. Your personal profile will become more detailed, including your shopping habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, political affiliation, reading preferences, friends, and potentially your psychological and emotional status. All of this information will eventually be fused into one large database. In fact, the government has already setup well over fifty fusion centers around the nation. What goes on in these centers is kept strictly confidential, and there doesn't seem to be any agency in charge of them, but we know they exist, and we know that their purpose is to acquire, aggregate and act on whatever information they have available to them. 

March 25, 2012 - Total Information Awareness

With the advent of the internet and the exponential increase of global communications, our Brave New World Order Overlords need new facilities to handle the sheer volume of encrypted data!

Have no fear, Big Brother is working on it as we speak:

That blog post was based on the following article I had read, that had been posted 10 days before:


March 15, 2012 - The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

Monday, December 10, 2012 - The Planned Obsolescence of Privacy

All the pieces are in place. The Age of Big Brother is nigh.

Think I exaggerate?

Have a look-see, right here.

In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who’s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.

After I made that post, LewRockwell.com blogger took note in Extremely Serious Privacy Problem in America.

"Here is a libertarian who recognizes the end of privacy and sees it as a foregone conclusion. His pessimism is total. He offers no defense of privacy at all." - Micheal S. Rozeff, The LRC Blog

To which I responded:

Is it pessimism to point out the truth?

The loss of our privacy from the Surveillance State's intrusions IS a forgone conclusion.

Has been since October 26, 2001, when the PATRIOT act was signed into law.

If you have healthcare insurance, you already have no privacy here in the Land of the Fee and Home of the Tax and Credit-Debt Slaves.

What defense can I, an anonymous blogger on teh interwebz, offer for this now obsolete concept of privacy?

I merely belabor to point out the truth, because from where I'm sitting, it seems to me that 90% of the people in this Country are oblivious to this ongoing destruction of what used to be a Constitutionally recognized right to privacy.

Almost one year later, we now have an NSA whistleblower who fled my home state, the 50th outpost in the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave," to seek refuge in a COMMUNIST CHINESE STATE, to confirm what I had already been reading and blogging about for years.

Mr. Snowden, thanks for confirming what many of us already knew.

Vox is right, you are a hero of human liberty.

There is only one thing left to do for those of us who still care about obsolete concepts like freedom, privacy, and a non-intrusive Government.

Refuse and Resist, wherever we can, whenever we can..


How?

In small ways. Engage in subterfuge. A personal mis-info and dis-info guerilla campaign.

Examples?

* When your at a check out at one of the box store Corporate retail outlets in your area, and they ask you for your name and phone number, give the checkout person deliberately false info. That's not against the law. Yet.

* Never say anything into a cell phone, nor text anything, nor blog, vlog, post, email, write, tweet, instagram or comment anything that you wouldn't be comfortable with having total strangers read, see or hear....because all forms of electronic communications ARE stored and can and will be used against you should the need for authorities to do so, arise.

* If at all possible, use cash for your purchases. Try and stick to stores and farmer's markets where a "club" card is not required, for as many purchases as you possibly can. If you must, try and use other people's club cards and pay with cash. I have the club cards from several deceased friends and family that I use whenever I shop at such stores.

* If you find it necessary to have a smart phone or some other mobile data device, figure out how to disable GPS applications. And if for whatever reason you ever find yourself being pursued by the authorities for any reason whatsoever, don't forget to shut off your "smart" phone. Hell, just to be certain, remove the battery. If your situation is really serious, than leave it on and ditch it hidden on a bus or another vehicle heading somewhere far away.

* Don't buy any new vehicles with the OnStar or other perpetual tracking devices built into it.

* If you MUST have a social media profile, fill it full of false or ambiguous information...especially use a fake name. If you insist on posting pictures to your social media pages, don't use pictures taken with your smart phones, as they are now designed to automatically include hidden data embedded in the pics and vids themselves, revealing the time, location and other personal details of where and when that photo was taken.

* If you really want to get off grid, only blog or update your social media pages or check your web based email on public computers and internet cafe's and other such places.

* Another strategy would be to have a wireless laptop or other device that does not have your personal info stored in it at all, and use it only at free Wi-Fi hotspots.

* Whenever you're doing an online search, use only the search engines and proxy server sites that provide anonymity. Search engines like DuckDuckGo and StartPage.com.

* Don't buy appliances that have internet connection features built in.

* Minimize your use of Debt Enslavement Cartel member establishments...aka Banks. Don't use debit cards or credit cards as much as possible.

These are all ideas I myself practice as much as possible. Does this make me paranoid?

Addiction by Design

More and more people are waking up to the reality that we are in the midst of a real life zombie apocalypse. Mark Sisson over at Mark's Daily Apple noticed the same thing, too:

Restaurants and bars and coffee shops across the world are littered with broken-neck zombies gazing into their smartphones. I’ve seen entire families out to dinner, each member’s attention fixated on an iPhone as they spoon food into mouth, pausing only to breathe and guzzle cola. I’ve seen young guys out at bars who, instead of checking out the women at the next table over or jabbering at each other with youthful exuberance, feel the need to tell everyone on their Facebook lists just how much fun they claim to be having. I’ve even caught myself lingering at the computer after work, doing nothing of import even as a gorgeous spring day ticks away into the ether of time right outside the window. Why? Just what the heck is our collective problem?

One guy who is studying the palm-zombie apocalypse is Dr. Kieth Ablow, who writes in his recent FoxNews article:

WE ARE RAISING A GENERATION OF DELUDED NARCISSISTS

I have been writing a great deal over the past few years about the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories. On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of “friends.” They can delete unflattering comments. They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), “speak” in pithy short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and musicians they “like.”

Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth “following,” as though they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual fanning of false love and false fame. Using computer games, our sons and daughters can pretend they are Olympians, Formula 1 drivers, rock stars or sharpshooters. And while they can turn off their Wii and Xbox machines and remember they are really in dens and playrooms on side streets and in triple deckers around America, that is after their hearts have raced and heads have swelled with false pride for “being” something they are not.

Well that would certainly help to explain one aspect of why we now live in an age where most people are compulsory slaves to their hand held gadgetry that gives them mobile access to the virtual lives of virtual SUCCESS that they've built up on teh Interwebz. The disconnect is growing.

What is it about teh Interwebz and mobile device technology that has become so addictive to the masses? It can't just be the creation of a virtual life of virtual success and popularity that is driving the ubiquity of mesmerized zombies staring incessantly at their hand held devices anywhere and everywhere. Roosh recently posted a dramatized account of a woman slavishly addicted to her mobile affirmation device smart phone. I wish I could say it was a work of pure fiction...but I know a few men and women who are like that. I know some folks in my social circles who now politely decline invitations to go camping or beach parties because they are planned to be held in areas where there is no wi-fi access. These are people that used to come to all the events my peer groups planned...now, the prospect of an entire weekend without being plugged into their social media realities is like a heroin junky contemplating an entire weekend without any smack.

It boggles the mind.

The thing the think we need to understand, is that these addictive behaviors are not just some accidental, unintended consequence of technology companies who only really want to realize profits by offering their gadgets and apps to improve our lives. The principles of using intermittent rewards with visual and audio stimuli to cause addiction is well understood by designers and engineers alike. As Ricky Raw pointed out in his post, Bullshit and Intermittent Rewards:

The simplest definition I can come up with for intermittent rewards would be “unpredictable random rewards in response to repeated behavior.” A perfect illustration would be gambling in general, and slot machines in particular. With a slot machine, you do the same behavior over and over again, put in a token and pull a lever, but you never know when you’ll actually be rewarded for this behavior. This creates an incentive to keep repeating the behavior, because you are chasing the reward, and you become convinced that if you just do it one more time, that may be the time you get the reward. All gambling works like this to a degree, which is what makes it such a compulsive addiction. Intermittent rewards also are used in dog training. B.F. Skinner is credited with pioneering the intermittent reward theory by his experiments with the operant conditioning chamber, better known as a Skinner Box…

This NY Times article ^[4] discusses intermittent rewards and describes their power well:
The makers of slot machines may rely on the lure of life-changing jackpots to attract customers, but the machines’ ability to hook so deeply into a player’s cerebral cortex derives from one of the more powerful human feedback mechanisms, a phenomenon behavioral scientists call infrequent random reinforcement, or ”intermittent reward.” Children whose parents consistently shower them with love and attention tend to take that devotion for granted. Those who know they’ll never be rewarded by their parents stop trying after a while. But those who are rewarded only intermittently — in the fashion of a slot machine — will often pursue positive outcomes with a persistent tenacity. ”That hard-wiring that nature gave us didn’t anticipate electronic gaming devices,” says Howard Shaffer, director of the division on addictions at Harvard Medical School and perhaps the country’s foremost authority on gambling disorders.

”The slot machine is brilliantly designed from a behavioral psychology perspective,” says Nancy Petry, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. ”The people who are making these machines are using all the behavioral techniques to increase the probability that the behavior of gambling will reoccur.” She refers to intermittent reward and ”second-order conditioning” — the lights and sounds that go off when a player wins, for example, or the two cherries in a row that convinces people they’re getting closer.

”No other form of gambling manipulates the human mind as beautifully as these machines,” concludes Petry, who has studied gambling treatments since 1998. ”I think that’s why that’s the most popular form of gambling with which people get into trouble.”

Intermittent rewards and second-order conditioning, taken from slot machine technology and brought to a whole new level of addiction with the combination of smart phones and social media. A continually reinforced addiction to a virtual reality life... an electronic leash far too many are willing to embrace without a second thought as to how it may impact their lives and behavior.

Creating virtual lives is only a part of the overall dynamics of what technology and 24-7 access to teh Interwebz is doing to our species. We've got an increasing epidemic of sexual dysfunction thanks to teh pr0n. While most of the reported problems arising from masturbating to porn are males who develop PIED - Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction - it appears the young women who've never had real sex and begin masturbating to porn at a young age can also develop dysfunctional, sexually deviant addictions and become incapable of normal sexual response to good old fashioned, human male-in-female sex. I had no idea teh Pr0n could do it to women too...but it looks like no one is immune to it's effects.

The more we look plainly at the evolving reality around is, the more apparent it becomes that we are currently living in the technocratic dystopia foretold by the likes of Orwell, Huxley, Wells et al. The addiction to the intermittent rewards doled out by hand held gadgetry is just the latest means for amusing ourselves to death.

As the Palm Zombie Apocalypse virus continues to spread, I'm sure we will see various new manifestations of the ways in which it's addictive uses and abuses affects the human mind and behavior in strange, pathological and deviant ways.

The mantra of the cultural Marxist's revolution of the 1960's was "Tune in , turn on and drop out."

That platitude has now been replaced.

The revolution will no longer be televised.

"Log on, Update and Zone Out" is the mantra of our Brave New World Order.

The revolution will be tweeted, instagrammed, pinterested and facedbooked. Quick, better go and check your SMARTphone...you just might miss it!