Brendon J. Wilson | Page 186 | www.brendonwilson.com

June 21, 2002April 28, 2012 by Brendon J. Wilson

Waste Of Money

This week the World Health Organization released “shocking” results confirming that, yes Virginia Slims, second hand smoke causes cancer. Really. Not to be too sarcastic, but in the words of Denis Leary: “These things are bad for you?!? …I thought they were good for you! I thought they had Vitamin C in them and stuff!”

What amazes me is that we’re still spending money on this type of research. It’s not like we don’t already know smoking and cancer are linked, the evidence has been piling up since the “Cancer by the Carton” article appeared in Reader’s Digest fifty years ago. People are starving halfway around the world, and we’re spending money dissecting the implications of smoking with such forensic detail that had the same been done with the invention of fire, we’d only just have wrapped up the research necessary to safely conclude that it was hot and burned things. Haven’t we got other, more important, things to spend money on?

Of course, as I say this most of the world is mobilizing the most advanced communications technology for the purpose intently watching twenty-two men kick a ball around a field, or some guy put a small ball in a hole. Sports. It’s always about men and their balls, and money is no object.

And it’s not like governments are faring any better. Just this week the US House of Representatives approved H. Res. 269, which states:

“That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged.”

Sure, the US Government can’t come up with a way to reduce pollution, but there’s plenty of time to spend taxpayers’ money to debate a bill to recognize Meucci, despite the fact that doing so has very little impact on the world at large.

Every day it becomes a little more apparent that mankind is doomed to destroy itself because we’re too stupid/under motivated to actually get off our asses and do anything about it. That said, it’s time to go home and do nothing all weekend.

June 18, 2002April 28, 2012 by Brendon J. Wilson

Repent Sinner!

For about the last year or so, I’ve seen a recurring message around Vancouver wherever I look. It’s been on bus shelters, on pieces of paper strewn throughout the city, even on duct tape stuck to walls and billboards. The form of the message is always the same, written in the same familiar cursive handwriting, one half of the message in red Jiffy marker, the other half in black Jiffy marker.

The message is simple:

Is it some kind of art project? In some ways the message reminds me of the Obey Giant guerilla art phenomenon started by Shepard Fairey. But there seems to be some deeper meaning to this message than just an experiment in pop art or counter-counter media. The word on the street is that the message is distributed by a (supposedly crazy) elderly homeless man, though part of me wonders if that’s a cover story. It might just be some religious nut on a mission. After all, there’s enough of them around Vancouver.

Take the Friday-night Granville Street preachers, for example. Every time we visited Vancouver for a summer vacation, we’d inevitably go out to see a movie on Granville Street. It’d be a Friday night, and just like the wallpaper in the Capitol 6 Cinema bathroom (silver with sillouettes of classic film stars), the entertainment on the opposite side of the street never changed. Fours geezers, three guitars, two bibles, and The Truth. Handing out pamphlets and singing hymns, these guys were earning their way into Heaven the hard way (unlike some other people in the Catholic church we could name).

Could the “repent sinner” messages be another face of the same group? Some kind of subliminal depth charge hidden in a sea of media noise waiting for its next victim? That has to be it…it’s a meme, a contagious idea that only exists in the minds of those exposed to it, waiting to be spread.

Congratulations. You’ve just been infected.