To Whom It May Concern

Marx's Communist Manifesto had a ripple effect that, good or bad, has shaped the modern world in dramatic ways.  Various other authors have written works that have modified the social consciousness with a force that could never have been predicted.  Without such visionaries the world would be in more chaos than it is.  Teetering on the brink of destruction as we are, we would have gone over the edge decades ago had it not been for the revolutionary hearts and minds of many.  This is my manifesto.

Wordscraper, Words with Friends, Wordfeud and other offshoot bastardizations of the noble game of Scrabble are bullshit.

That's right.  Bullshit.  Even as I type these words, I can hear the voices of my extended family as they scream obscenities at me and disown me.  Many of my beloved friends and family members are avid participants in these games of lesser humans.  But it must end.  I am willing to endure the inevitable persecution for the truth.  It must be told, that we may evolve and carry on.  For with Wordscraper, we all perish.

In each of your hearts, you know that what I say is the truth.  It may pain you greatly, and the inclination will be to allow your ego to coddle you.  For as fallible humans, our ego dictates that we MUST be right, even if the truth says otherwise.  Aristotle died because of this.  Socrates was put to death.  Gandhi was assassinated.  But the truths they spoke live on.  And should death be brought to my doorstep, so help me God, this truth too, shall survive.

And here is why all those sub-Scrabble games are bullshit.

1.  You don't have to actually sit face to face with anyone.  How many more of our group activities are we going to relegate to sitting behind a computer screen.  I am suspicious of any situation where you can be playing a game with someone and in another window be looking up photos of chicks with dicks (Click it.  You know you want to.  You're making assumptions.  Go ahead and click it.  It's not what you think).  It would shock you how often this happens.  I've been compiling statistics.  Even as I write this I have a window open with a picture of a dog biting its own balls.  It's disrespectful to the game, the other person, yourself, and probably the earth.  But it's the inevitable consequence of anything done on the internet.  It's a distracting environment.  Scientists have proven that there is no human alive on earth today that can check their email without also watching an infomercial for pajamajeans or a video of a slow loris walking around doing slow loris things.  Imagine trying to stay focused while waiting for someone else to take their turn with nothing to do but sit and stare at a gameboard with a god awful color scheme and way too many bonus squares.  Even thinking about it makes me cringe.  Shit talking, misdirection, and psychological ploys are the heart and soul of a true game of Scrabble and require an actual opponent.  Yelling "You no good dirty poop eating word puker!" at your computer screen has little to no effect on a person on the other side of a broadband connection.  But yell that in someone's face and watch their heart melt with fear.  Computers are just robots without legs and robots are replacing everyone and it should be a red flag to us as humans.  Has no one seen the Terminator movies?  The first time I saw a self checkout in the grocery store I thought to myself, "Shit, somehow this is going to ruin Scrabble and eventually the world."

2.  Speaking of bonus squares, there are way too many of them on non-Scrabbles.  As mentioned before, the trickery of the human ego is strong.  And being able to get scores in the thousands because there are 47 quadruple word squares and they're 3 squares away from triple letter scores is not healthy.  It's giving people an overinflated sense of their ability.  Human beings need struggle to be fully human.  But these games are turning us into cattle.  Sheep for the slaughter.  Fish for the plucking.  Popplers for the eating.  It's a dire situation.  If we keep validating ourselves without an adequate effort, next thing you know we'll sacrifice all of our civil and basic rights because it's too hard to walk downtown and participate in a demonstration.  Plus, what if someone takes their turn while we're gone?  I know from experience the effects of this mental attitude.  I missed the Million Man March (I was a keynote speaker) because I was involved in a protracted game of Warcraft.  Not World of Warcraft you nerd.  The real Warcraft.

3.  Along with having a chicks with dicks window open, many people choose to have a Scrabble word generator (contrary to the website slogan, this is not conducive with winning) window open.  It doesn't matter if I'm your opponent, because my game is so complete, so perfect, that your digital crutches won't help you hobble on to victory.  At best you might stay within a hundred points of me for 5 turns.  But it's still ruining the sportsmanship, the rich heritage of honor and integrity once associated with Scrabble.  I know this to be a common practice because I have friends who I've never heard use a 3 syllable word in real life and often have a genuine look of being offended when someone else does.  And then they spell words on these bastardized game boards like "obeisance."  Again, bullshit.  It's not like you even need the word generator up.  That's just for those who are extra lazy.  Because the game won't accept any input that isn't an actual word.  You can just randomly fling letters about until some word happens that uses a bonus square that you had your eye on.  This is the modern equivalent of flinging poop at a wall just to see what sticks.  Which brings me sharply to my next point.

4.  There is no word challenge function.  This is probably 40% of what makes Scrabble Scrabble.  Most grown ups would admit that actions have consequences.  This is a concept lost on the youth as a direct result of these watered down Scrabble abominations.  Not having the ability to lay down farce words and not having the ability to challenge or to bait others to challenge when you use an unlikely but entirely legitimate word eliminates the entire psychological component of the game.  It is another dangerous trend in our country.  Less thinking, more mindless clicking.  Never having to read a Scrabble opponent puts you at a direct disadvantage when entering the job market.  It's not that the economy is down and unemployment is up.  It's just that college graduates are dumber.  Because of psuedo-Scrabbles.  No one wants to hire someone who has never mindf***ed anyone.  Every job, in the end, just boils down to sales.  And that's all about the mindf***.  Again, there's probably science to back up what I'm saying.  But I'm busy.  I can't check.  You check.

5.  This is sort of a continuation of the Scrabble word generator thing.  But it's worth mentioning again.  Quit hiding behind the fact that you can just make random combinations of letters until the computer accepts one.  Learn some skills.  Figure out how to make a good, strategic block.  Anticipate your opponent's next move.  And then screw them as hard as you can.  Follow it up by blowing in a conch shell.  A victorious conch bellow.  For the love of god people, learn the 2 letter words.  Here's a free lesson.  There are 101 acceptable two letter words in Scrabble.  There are none with the letter V or C.  You learned the alphabet when you were like 1.  You should be able to learn the "Words of Annihilation" as I am fond of referring to them.  They're only made up of letters you learned from the original alphabet.  There aren't any curveballs in there.  No umlauts.  No Chinese characters.  Just those same letters arranged into various sequences of 2.  Even if you're too lazy to memorize them, learn these ones.  They're raw power... xi, qi, za, and jo.  Those are high dollar letters.  I've gotten 62 points with them.  And if you want to add some credibility to your being at the most fundamental level, figure out what they mean.

6.  If nothing else, think of the tiles.  Remember back to the first time you played Scrabble with your parents or some kids from the neighborhood.  Remember the smell of the plastic grey bag, containing so much potential for wordsmithery.  You can almost feel the smooth rounded corners of the little letter squares, the slight groove of the engraved characters, painted white to contrast with the rich fake mahogany color of the tiles, or the black letters against the naked wood (yes, naked wood) if your parents wouldn't shell out the extra money for a deluxe board.  Then there's the sound of the click and tap as you lay down the letters, triumphantly spelling the word "gymnasts" on a triple word score.  You guys never had a chance.

Look, I know why you did it.  I understand the allure of convenience and luster of technology.  But there are some things that are our birthright as human beings.  And if we don't protect and preserve them, what will be left for our children?  Put your phones and mouses (mice? meese?) down.  The cost is far too high.

My nephew is choking on a tortilla chip.  So I should go.  Eh, viva la revolucion!  Seacrest, out.

What's in a Name? Rarely the Whole Story

And so what was the point of that previous, long, drawn out post about the woman in Africa?  The point, very plainly, was to put money into perspective.  This thing we have elevated to primary importance clearly has the ability to affect major consequences.  But what is it exactly?  Where does money come from?  What gives it value and what does it actually represent in our society?

Do a little experiment.  Ask these questions at your bank.  If anyone should have some intellectual understanding of money, it should be the people staffing the banks, correct?  I have yet to meet a single person at a bank who could even tell me who printed our nation's money.  Each had an "Oh yeah!" moment when the Federal Reserve was mentioned.  But to me, it seemed an insufficient level of basic financial knowledge for someone who had such a broad understanding of what credit cards I would qualify for, how they would benefit me, and how to sell me on applying for one.  I admit this is a mildly asshole-ish thing to do, but I have always done it with a smile and a good natured tone.  I tell every one of them that I will sign up for their card if they can tell me what gives money its value.  I still have 0 credit cards.

So where does money come from?  The Federal Reserve is the obvious answer.  They print our money on fancy cotton paper in a basically monochromatic scheme.  Why they haven't switched to some kind of plastic which can be washed, endures much greater abuse, and lasts longer, I don't know.  Why they haven't printed different denominations on different size paper to make it easier for the blind and the visually impaired to manage their cash, I don't know.  Why they don't print the money in different colors for similar reasons and ease of transaction, I don't know. (I have to begrudgingly admit that it was my Kiwi brother in law, who I incessantly berated for not being able to count money at the register, that brought all this money logistics stuff to my attention.)  Tradition, maybe.  I guess it doesn't really make a difference since less than 5% of all money in circulation is in printed cash form.  The rest is electronic or in other forms even more obscure.  But back to the matter at hand: The Federal Reserve.

It just makes cents.  Get it?

With a name like that, you would imagine that it would be some part of the national government.  But you would be wrong.  Don't worry.  All the bankers thought the same.  The Federal Reserve is a privately owned, corporate bank that lends money to the American Government at interest.  Feel free to read that again.  Every dollar in circulation, every dollar used to finance a road project or an international war, or a major corporate bailout is on loan and must be payed back to the Federal Reserve by the US Government.  But if there is interest, then the amount of money in circulation can not and never will be enough to satisfy the debt.  The only way to repay what's owed is to put more money in circulation which incurs more interest.  It's insane to think about.  It's circular logic to a destructive degree.  But it's an important concept to grasp.  Somehow, at some point in history, we privatized our money supply.  We made it a commercial endeavor for a few very rich, very powerful men.  I still don't know what to think about all this.  Well, I do.  But they aren't popular ideas.  Because they include totally whacked out goals like trying to simplify my consumer existence and reduce the amount of money necessary for daily existence.  In other words, my goal isn't to make a million dollars.  My goal is to find a way to never need a million dollars.  Stupid, I know.

There was a point in history when control over the nation's supply of money was guaranteed to the American people by The Constitution of the United States.  But that all ended when Woodrow Wilson took office.  There are various conspiracy theories surrounding the institution of the Federal Reserve.  Even though they do correlate with reality, I don't want this to become anymore conspiracy theory nutjobesque than it already is.  So I'll just tread water here on the surface.  Google the theories if you're interested.  They're pretty expansive.  Anyway, like many other major acts of government that seem to be in violation of our basic human and constitutional rights (Ahem! Federal income tax. Cough!) it seems as though due process was conveniently circumvented in the case of the Federal Reserve Act.  Rather than bitch about all that stuff that I can't really verify because I wasn't born and don't fully understand the legislative process, I'll just go ahead and print the words directly from the horse's mouth.  The horse had this to say about signing the Federal Reserve into existence:

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

If I may infer, it would seem as though President Wilson had some small regret over how it all went down.  I mean, I had to read between the lines.  But after some careful analysis, I was comfortable making the assumption that he didn't use the phrase "ruined my country" to mean a good thing.  It's worth noting that The Great Depression began just 8 years after the end of Wilson's presidency.  This led to the abandonment of the gold standard and our nation's almost pathological reliance on credit.

There are a few other questions that need to be answered.  What gives money it's value?  We used to have the gold standard.  That was done away with.  Even then we were an industrial nation with a strong GDP and good exports.  But we don't make anything anymore.  So from where could our money possibly derive it's value?  Another important question is how does that interest owed to the Fed get paid?  Intrinsically you know the answer.  You just don't know how simple and absolute the answer is.

This is just another in a laundry list of examples of how our power and autonomy is being diverted.  Just because the gears were set in motion before many of us were born doesn't mean we're not holding the wrench.  We can either toss it into the machine and bring it to a grinding halt or we can turn a few nuts and bolts and change the way it operates.  The third option is to allow it to run until every part of it has been so exploited that it breaks on it's own.  But by then it will be too late.  Simple reassembly will be impossible.  We'll have to start from scratch.

Answers to come... if you don't find them first before I get the chance to write again.  It gets worse.

Disclaimer: I want to be clear about something for individuals or organizations that may get the wrong idea about what I'm saying.  I am not anti-government.  I am not anti-corporate.  I am simply against the abuse of power.  I am a proponent of power-with rather than power-over.  Interdependence rather than dominance.

This is just a brief and incomplete synopsis.  As always, I encourage you to research more and broaden your understanding.  I'll try to be funnier next time.  It'll mitigate the shock.