Clusters

I am staying home today.

I am having a migraine. I get these rolling pains across my head that are technically called 'cluster migraines' according to a doctor that I paid $90 to for a consultation. He also told me to avoid caffeine (inc chocolate), and that they can be caused by stress, or the release of stress, and to take nurofen or aspirin, but always to eat something before taking either, and to take zantac or something similar as well to prevent the nausea that nurofen gives me.

That was it. That in an hour long examination. Prick was a 'headache specialist' and he just wanted to grab as much stats as he could for his own studies. Didn't benefit me any. As if knowing the 'name' makes any bloody dif.

Anyhow, here I am. Slept for nearly twelve hours straight, and will spend as much of today as possible sleeping. Have got a dull throb behind one eye right now, but in ten minutes it could turn into a sharp stabbing pain in the forehead, or a line of sharp pain across the top of my head. If I go to work then I will have to spend the day doped on nurofen and will end up feeling, and behaving, as if stuck in neutral.

It is weirdly affecting my typing and my spelling is atrocious. Good thing I spell check this - there is a spelling error in almost every sentence.

Have read an interesting article on the Newsweek site about the proposed health care reforms in the US. Specifically about how they will be burden the young with the cost of looking after the old. Given the large number of financial burdens the working tax-payers in the US (and Australia) already have the future for them looks grim. Interesting point about the cost of the aged being twice the US military budget. It is even more so in Australia.

The options are:
1) Stop paying taxes, i.e. minimise income;
2) Leave;
3) Rebel; or
4) Suffer.

I believe that it must be obvious to even the stupid that this cannot be a long-term solution. The working generation is being dissuaded from having children by the expense of living themselves; they are being punished for succeeding, so they see no reason to try harder and earn more; all of this means that there will be fewer tax payers to bear the burden precisely as the older generation burgeons. As the aged cohort grows and the working cohort shrinks the cost ratios exaggerate and the system passes the bounds of stability. It fails.

The old don't care. As long as they get looked after they care not that their children will inherit a bankrupt state and will not be able to enjoy the same privileged retirement.

This is an old argument, its coming was foreseen long ago, good to see that it has now hit the main steam media and might open up some public debate.

It is, of course, just one more symptom of the collapse of Western society; indeed, of our civilisation.

I was only recently talking to someone about the cycle that all societies go through, whereby they all seem to collapse after about a thousand years or so. Egypt's Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms were each about a thousand years long, and separated by interregnums of sixty or ninety years, i.e. two or three generations. Chinese history seems to me to also have such collapses of centralised authority into anarchy or regionalised kingdoms or periods of warlords. India has gone through cycles as well, but complicated by a series of racial invasions. The Mayan collapse was mainly due to overstressed agriculture, as was the second collapse of Babylon. The first collapse of Rome, who can forget? And of course, the piece de resistance, Byzantium!

Why is Byzantium so important? Simply because it is such a total mirror image of what is happening today. The tale by Priscus (who accompanied Maximus to the court of Attila and wrote of their journey) of the Roman businessman who came to his tent one evening because he wanted to talk to someone from his old home, and maybe for the chance to talk Greek for a bit, is one of my favourite stories, short as it is. The businessman had been hounded by bureaucracy and heavy taxes and so had left the Empire and gone to live with the Huns. He had taken a Hunnic wife and he was running a successful business - without government interference or high taxation. It is the exact image of so many successful Australian and American men leaving for the Orient to start new lives. It so encapsulates where we are right now, namely one or two generations from collapse - for how long after that did Byzantium survive?

Or so I thought until a recent conversation where I was questioned as to the speed of the collapse once it is initiated. The questioner pointed out the moral degradation of modern Western society (which, I might point out, is unfortunately infecting Eastern cultures) and its impact upon society. His point was that if this was so, then will not the collapse happen sooner than I anticipate? I had to agree with his logic. I had always thought that it would be my children or grand-children that would see this fearful day, but perhaps I will live to see it.

It had been my intention to 'prepare' for the event. That is why I used to have a four hectare place in the country, where I was growing an orchid, had a vegie garden, was water sufficient, was going to get myself energy sufficient. Of course all of that was lost in my separation. And since in this country the woman always gets seventy percent, that being 'equality', I had little chance to rebuild soon. So I decided to try other options; such as trying to live to enjoy life, to explore, to see the world, experience other cultures. All of which lead me to realise that life is more fun in some other places, so why not try to emigrate and work and live there?

But the great 'GFC' (as if there haven't been dozens of others, perhaps it should be called 'GFC 14'?) put a hole in that.

I have to believe that I will pull through, achieve something worth while. Acknowledging that the next few months will be touch and go. After that, though, things should get better and I should be in a much better place than ever before.

I have to believe this, otherwise I would be tempted to blow my brains out, for after all, why choose to continue to live if you do not believe that your future life will be worthwhile?

Morbid, you think. But we all choose to believe that we will be luckier than we have any logical reason to believe. The natural psychology of man is an unjustifiable optimism. Indeed, we probably term a more realistic view to be pessimistic. The Gods will favour us. Well, I kind of don't trust deities anymore.

Which, in my mind, brings me back to the initial point; one more straw in the bundle, when will the camel's back break? Ironic, but fitting, that it may happen during Obama's first term. Sadly, unlikely, I think that the economy has some more resilience before it finally snaps.

Handlebars

Okay, the first point has to be the sheer joy at the way the US elections are panning out at present with the people obviously waking up to how useless Obama is. Shame it is not a presidential and we have to suffer three more years of the fool. Interesting to see a fair number of 'Conservatives', a new party, unfortunately the US, like Britain, has a non-democratic voting system - hence how William Blythe (Bill Clinton to most) got elected when 60% of the country voted against him; had the US used any sort of actual democratic voting system, Australian, French, or Russian, then George Bush senior would have been re-elected.

My contract got extended, again. This week and then two weeks to backfill someone. The Monday after that is when the Health contract starts if we win it, and it is looking very good at this point. On that subject, turns out the RFP (Request for Proposals) was worded incorrectly and the workload will be twice the initial estimate. We did ask them to clarify the "three month project for each of two years, 130 person days total" and they said it was for the two years, but now they are saying it was meant to be for each year. Which means that it will be a full time job for both of us, and a good thing that we arranged the option to bring in a third as well.

Looking good. Yesterday I was getting very despondent, today it looks like one contract will slide into another, and then that could well slide straight into the next. I may not suffer from this GFC thing after all, well that is except for the bit about wasting most of a year trying to fit into Singapore's economy.

So far, so good.

Hmm, I am playing East India Company at the moment. Kind of boring, I got to locking the rest of Europe into the North Sea, cut off from their colonies in Africa and India, and I should have been winning, but instead I was going broke. So this time I am trying a bit more of a balancing act with the marine corps and actually taking and developing colonies.

I pretty well have given up on AI Wars, it was not as good as Sins of a Solar Empire. Even on the low settings I start with one star, the two AIs start with fleets in every star in the damned galaxy. With the medium settings on top of that they start invading my system before I have even had time to locate my damned ships! That has got to be a load of crap.

So mostly I haven't actually been playing much at all. Certainly not in the evenings during the week, as I normally would. Been working a bit later, and that has an impact as well.

I did some card readings at the end of the weekend. Something about the immediate future will be tough, beware of untrustworthy people, the medium term future will be tough, beware of untrustworthy people, but the long term outcome will be complete and fulfilling in a spiritual way. It didn't specifically say that I would marry six (or at least three) gorgeous teenagers and finally discover what sex can really be. Also didn't seem to be encouraging about the becoming-incredibly-rich plan. Just that I would be successful in mastering contrary energies. Or whatever, I can't recall it perfectly.

I got a call yesterday from AIM(SA) that the project management intensive for next week was cancelled due to too many withdrawals. Then a call today that it was back on and a promise of an email, which never came. I am not being very impressed.

Did my tax. Finally! I know, but when I phoned to get my NOA number the voice menu said that the personal returns window had been extended by a week, so I didn't fret. I had to call because the online package would not give it to me, so I had to call a person to answer the same questions but the person gave me my damned NOA. I should get over five thousand back. That was the first step in my stress load reducing - worst case; that could pay my rent over the December / January period, getting me through to the magical February where everyone predicts that the market will pick up. Now, of course, things a looking even a bit better than that and so I am putting on hold any plans to do a hard reset.

The warmer weather has good points and bad points.
The major good point is, of course, that the girlies are looking better as they dress less, and with so many Asians here now the skin content is greatly increased from what it was a few years ago.
The main bad point that is annoying me is that it means more people out partying Friday and Saturday nights, making noise to way after midnight and keeping me awake. Grouch that I am, this bothers me. If I can't be having fun then why should anyone else be allowed to?

Oh yeah, 'Handlebars'; I am growing a moustache for November - the raise awareness, and hopefully money, for men's health. As you know more men in Australia die from prostrate cancer than women die from breast cancer, and yet breast cancer research gets forty times more funding; more men die from testicular cancer than women die from cervical cancer, and yet cervical cancer gets more funding; more men die from either gender related illness or from preventable illnesses of any sort than do women, and yet women have their own health department, as do children, youths, aboriginals, and ethnics, but not men, not white, adult men. We do the majority of the work, we pay the majority of the taxes, and yet we are paying for everyone else's benefit. I think better than growing a moustache would be to be allowed to kill a few feminists, but we have to start somewhere.