Meanwhile, back inside the dream inside the frown

The dream ended.

I awoke to find myself lying on the ground outside the hospital where I realized i had been enfrowned. In my gripping lobe I gripped a sleek iPhone 3Gs, the tweet-shank newly bloodied by my frantic attempt to share my meaningless thoughts. I didnt’ feel any different, though my gas bladders were semi deflated. perhaps relinquishing a part of your identity to the meaninglessness of conventional life wasn’t actually bad. perhaps.. yes perhaps smalltalk was even acceptable.

I righted myself on my … legs? I had… these were real legs. I had real legs. The form that the great suit of the future had hidden me under… it had become me. My gas bladders weren’t empty, they were gone. And what’s more, I could see. All around me i could see a city, the city of Toronto, its middling skyscrapers, its sprigs of trees cropping up stridently amid the cityscape, its bland pedestrians with country-folk haircuts and cheap suits. Toronto, i saw it now, as it actually was, no chromo-licks or visionscreams. The sight.. the sight! It was real! And i had it!

I ran through the yard towards a street, dull gray, with metal lanes in the middle, some type of rails perhaps. I ran right up to the first person I met, and opened my…mouth? I had but one mouth, a real mouth. “Excuse me.”

“Yes?” he replied.

“Nice weather we’re having, wouldn’t you say?” It was okay, i wasn’t diminished. I could talk about the weather. Why not?

“Yep. It’ll be like this all week, over the weekend.”

“Oh, i should get out the barbeque.” Where was this coming from? I didnt’ have a barbeque. I didnt’ even know what a barbeque was, unless it was related to the BarbeQueen of the Smokey Grill chain of planets. Delicious brocopian slabs there, by the way. But her majesty’s passions had waned of late, and her slab fires burned low. Alas.

“Yeah. I’ll grill my own meat that i bought on a grill. I’ll serve it to friends, and we will have a beer together by my suburban pool. I have a wife, and she works at a school. Anyway, later.”

This wasn’t so bad. He was relating facts to me. pure facts. None of those terrible ideas cluttering up the conversation. No emotions, nothing contentious, just plain information so i can know that he’s just like me.

I explored this new freedom from having to have a personality for the rest of the day. I encountered some very clever people too. While i was strolling through something that they called “Kensington Market”, i ran into someone with thick rimmed glasses without prescription lenses. He told me that he had a magic watch. I asked him to show me. Apparently it told the future time.

“What time is it now?” he entreated.

“it’s 3:49, by my watch.” I didn’t have a watch, but speaking on autopilot tended to relinquish the correct results to any situation.

“Okay… I’ve set my watch to tell the time one hour from now. So that means right now its… hold on… ” he stared at his watch for a moment, in a seizure of concentration. “4:49.”

I would have verified his results, but i just innately trusted him, and couldn’t be bothered to muster any kind of imaginary clock in my head and watch it go ahead by one hour.

Later, i ran into the cleverest person. He had come up with a novel use for mnemonic devices.

“Most people waste mnemonic devices to remember chemical formulas, the names of kings, and so on. However, no one has applied them to merely learning english words before. Watch. Let’s say you have to remember the word ‘eat’. I use the word “feet”, because it rhymes with eat. So whenever i have to use the word ‘eat’, i think ‘feet’, and then that remindsme of eat.”

“Brilliant.” It seemed brilliant to me.

“It goes further. What if i want to eat, but i can’t remember the word, but i can’t remember the word to remind me of the word. It would be pretty embarrassing if i said i was hungry, and wanted to… uhhh. uhhhh. uhhhh, you know what i mean? So i think of the word hoof, because a hoof is a kind of foot. That reminds me of feet, then eat. BUt it doesn’t stop there, for every english word i have a mnemonic to remind me. Some of the words i actually have whole songs for. For instance, the word “preamble”. I have a song that goes like this.

Ambling around,
shambling around,
peas are green,
spleen, heat, hot, lamb,
delicious greek food,
imbiciles are rude,
route, road, toad,
tight, fight, combat,
contention is the root of all
problems, preblems,
prebpreb, prepre, pre!
Now just add amble to pre and you get
preamble, and that’s the easiest one yet.”

“That’s ingenius. that really is ingenius.”

“I know. If i ever need to say any number of words, i have thousands of songs. i have songs to remind me of the songs. Shall i sing one for you?”

“I’d love to hear one, but barbeque season, you feel me?”

His eyes become empty, and his muscles slackened, as though being hypnotized by some transcranial magnetometer.

“Yes–barbeque season.”

All around me the rastas and hipsters had dropped what they were carrying, and like Pharaohs (which in the timeframe now approximated for my within the great frown, i believe were called zombies. of course in my day, the zombie people had conquored egype and ruled over a race of shirts as pharaohs. Egypt got swindled a lot. The pharaohs were really.. slow witted… There’s no polite way of saying it.) they stumbled forward in unison.

“Yes–” they spoke “barbeque season.”

Though i couldn’t hear it, somewhere out in space, the lips of the great frown of the universe were curling into a vague half-smile. It was barbeque season, and the barbequeen’s fires were smoking up some delicious brocopian slabs, by which i mean our personalities.

To be queentinued…

The man from the hyper-future, Tyra Banks, stands amazed at the chest unleashed by his powerful super-suit’s chestmaker. With him are the nerd he recently met, and soeone who looks remarkably simlar to (name deleted). But it can’t be him, can it? (name deleted) is sleeping, dreaming, even now inside the frown of the universe… then who is this man? What is his plan? And his span? Fan.

The dials and knobs on my suit dialed down and knobbed down to the minimum. I was again allowed to utilize my own bodily limbs to control my directions and motions. how pleasing it was to regain that lost control.

The night air swelled with the rush if heat of the heaving breasts on the now breathing chest, and with the cries and yelps of the hapless Torontonians who had, understandably, not predicted this occurance. Torontonians are notably terrible at predicting the emergence of body parts in the middle of their city, as their future history would bear out time and time again. Old Shafty-Cocks of 2140 really springs to mind.

I turned my gaze proportionatly, following the golden ratio, towards the man who, until only an hour ago, had been my trusted companion. And yet, after vanishing into thin air at the hospital, and returning without much ado, he had seemed to be like another man who just looked like my friend. What had hapened to him? It was like taking the orange out of the orange skin and then putting some rags in the orange skin, and then saying ‘this is an orange, OR IS IT?” I’m saying this is my friend, or IS IT? You feel me?

I ji-HAD no time to find out (had no time to find out), as the blood pooling up in my suit from my recent interaction with bullets meant i had to gather my mind and hurl my body onward. Why had my friend shot into my body with his gun? It wasnt’ even a malicious gun, it was a kind looking gun. one of those little stubby guns, that you imagined the big guns always teased and that you just wanted to buy when you saw it at the gun shelter. In the age in which i come from, guns were large wooly creatures, barely resembling the primitive guns of today, but in that stubby little fellow I saw the Grintaur, the gun I had growing up. Not actually growing up, obviously, as I blinked into existence all at once due to m suit’s conclusion that it was inevitable, but nevertheless, i blinked into existence with a full life’s memory set. With a bonus expansion pack of half remembered possible victimizations.

“You’re a real dink for some reason,” i shouted, as i turned and hopped away. My suit’s inflective screens corrected my clearly pained intonations into those of a tough urban fellow. While i said “you’re a real dink for some reason”, what (name deleted) and the nerd heard was “Yo, ya’ll is total douche machine, white honkey ghost!” Cool, right? That’s pretty cool.

The suit’s wound augmenter kicked in, and my bullet wound began to feel like a scorpion bite in my hand. It wouldn’t interfere with me running, though my leg now liberated from pain, i was running awfully hard on it, and I could feel blood glooshing out. It was without a doubt the wettest my jeans had ever been thus far. I made amental note to add it to the big wet jeans scroll in the year 249,493 when i was next visiting that time.

In the dim light of king’s college circle, surrounded on all sides by venerable old buildings, universty College, a vast victorian edifice with tasteful ivy growing on every side, i could make out the nerd leaping on (name deleted) and wrestling away the gun. The starlit sky arched overhead like a threadbare shroud, permeated with vague light from beyond. There was something remarkably peaceful about this epoch, no lip-chives, scenting the night with their spicy salivas, no gontules, lobing your legs with their lobes. No scrimshaw pipes hanging from everyone’s hoary beards, drizzling out smoke into the blustering new england autumn nights. All three of the worst things in time were absent.

In the distance now echoed the sound of sirens, emergency vehicles rushing to disruptions in the city’s life. Probably the giant breasts, I’d imagine. I’d be willing to bet that that ws, by far, the biggest disruption. However, though i didn’t know it at the time… I mean, though i dno’t know it at the time, i don’t know what i’m about to say, the galgravolt had realized it was a galgravolt. The city, and everyone in it, was doomed. I dont’ know that yet though. I’m saying it with my fingers poked into my ears so i don’t’ hear myself say it.

To be continued.

The Visionary – a Large head with 5 faces for a total of 6 eyes. While dormant, the visionary has a smooth head of obsidian, no facial features, and exposed muscle fibres on its neck. When the priests insert their hands into the muscle fibers, nerve fibers invade the skin. The priest’s head loses all features, turning black. The Visionary’s faces appear, and its eyes open. The priest and the visionary are one, and he can now see in every direction for many miles.

Look forward to our comic. it won’t make sense probably.

Trumpuant old bratriarchs did aplutarp their friends,
when astrogothic misanlips were worply on the mend.
So Mantagorianius and Vilkar of the North,
extrafoluated, and on their horses sallied forth.
“Grelhere” he snaped his miterfork, grelhering all the while,
“I grelhere to utmost max, and yet perforce grelhere in style.”
The Bulwark of the North, Vilkar, was mightily impressed,
and on a wooden table top he scribed little vest,
a pair of slacks, and borlant straps to keep them all athwaite.
Maltruviantic periworts began to integrate
themselves into the dia-gram of gramo-dia-cloths,
the type defined by treaty as those victimized by moths,
the type that, when encountered carved upon a table top
must hastily erasured-be by table ‘rasing cops.
The force of table ‘rasers raced their tabular tontoons
toward the little sketch of vest and straps and pantaloons,
but Mantagorianius rose high his sabre’s spear!
And shouted in a voice both soft and low and high and clear,
“Dear sirs! Grelhere, grelhere at once, don’t rantipariate!
These scribbled scrabbles scrumbled ‘pon this table here of late
are little more than dendrophagographic vest-i-ments,
And gazing ‘pon them suddenly not 15 moments hence
you shall not see these clothes, defined by law as heinous things!
But wait and wait, vesperiate, ’till the moment-weasel sings!”
Waited they amongst the tables on the table trees,
A whistling, sitting deep in saddles, leaning at their ease,
until the weasel weaseled out to sing his weasel song.
Some moments had transpired, 15 full and aptly long.
Turning they their gazes down to oculate but good,
there somehow all the clothing drawn had eaten all the wood.
So Mantagorianius and Vilkar of the North
excused themselves from Hepstiburt and Amilcar the 4th,
those Erasing Cops who had this afternoon enforced
the dictates of the Lemon-Man their matriarch divorced.

You’ve heard the legends say that if you leave here, don’t look back,
keep facing to your destination down the trodden track,
don’t hearken to the snigglements of Periworts behind,
or turning round you’ll view a sight to nullify your mind!
Facing you a riddle whose solution no one knows…
why Maltruviantic Perwirorts are wearing little clothes

DUUUN DUUUUN DUUUUUUN!

As a university student, i remember this debate and how frustrating it was to get basic concepts across to people who just knew how to parrot the lines they have been fed. THis is true i guess for all controversies and conflicts, but this one raises my ire more than most. They argue that bank notes have no intrinsic value, that they only have value because people agree they have value, and that they are “based on nothing.” Its just paper with images printed on it. Gold, however, has intrinsic value, and a certain weight of gold is worth a certain amount. Objectively. Without referrence o anything else, gold has a value.

The problems with this concept are apparent immediately.

1) Gold has no intrinsic value. its just a lump of yellow metal, soft and heavy. Humans ascribe it value based partially on its visual attractiveness, partly on its utility as a non corrodible substance, and partly on its assumed rarity (gold ain’t so rare as people assume).
2) The value of gold is determined by what you can get in trade for it. For instance, 3 oxen for 1 gold coin. Or say, 160$ in bank notes for 1 gold coin. As a coin, its a medium of exchange, more valuable as a coin than as a metal for casting ornaments. Because as a coin, it has symbolic value. It symbolizes the ability to attain any goods you desire.
3) metal coins are surprisingly easy to counterfeit
4) Their value is not set, but rather, fluctuates like the values of all goods and currencies.

It should be apparent even to the most ardent supporter of a great leap backwards in currency to a fictional past where the use of gold as the basis for money meant that no one was ever poor, the economies of the world didn’t boom and collapse, and you knew that your money was REALLY worth something.

Consider this: A bank note is worth a specific weight in gold, and you can exchange your note for that gold. This is the concept of a gold based currency. Now consider this. Your bank note is worth a specific amount of chocolate, and you can exchange it for that amount of chocolate. I can take 1$ and get 49 grams of chocolate at any convenience store. what’s so special about gold? i can already spend 1$ and get a specific amount of gold. The fallacy is that by basing the value of the dollar on a certain weight of gold, you have a set value fo the dollar. Since the value of gold changes, however, based on its supply among other things, the value of the dollar is also fluctuating. Based on the cost of goods fluctuations, a certain amount of gold won’t have the same relative value to various goods, and so, in no way is currency based on gold any different than currency not based on gold. Ultimately, its only value is as a symbol we use to represent the conceptual value of goods and services.

Because what is money? Its a representation of labor. 1 unit of labor is worth 10 units of milk. 1 unit of labor is worth 2 units of bread. 1 unit of labor is worth 20 units of bottled water. We are exchanging our labor for goods and services, and rather than going into a store and saying “I worked 45 hours this week, i’d like to transfer my hours of work at 10/hr to your work storange facility, and gather food in your aisles in exchange,” we use money.

How does gold or silver currency differ? In no regard. Silver only has value in what it can buy, same as paper notes. Why was silver used as the basis for coinage? because it was rare enough that the market would not flood with counterfeit currency, its alloys were all easy to spot, and becusae people BELIEVED it was valuable.

That’s the real magic trick. In the past, people BELIEVED that only a currency based on a metal was a REAL currency. When Diocletian tried to move to a different system, making coins only a percentage silver, mixed with tin, people felt that the coins had decreased in value, and there was inflation. We know today that a nickle has no nickle in it, but we still believe its worth 1 wine gum, 1/5th of a gumball, etc. In the modern world when we moved from a currency based on gold to one not based on gold, we did not have massive inflation and economic ruin. We began a period of great economic prosperity. Why? Because people had been using bank notes for centuries, and were so far removed from actual metal coins that they no longer had to IMAGINE that gold or silver were part of the equation. The paper retained its symbolic value, which was abstracted from the symbolic value of the gold. One symbol replaced another.

To recap:
1) Gold has no intrinsic value. God does not decree that one oz of gold will be worth 10 oxen for all history. There is no edict from heaven on the exact prices of all things in relation to one another. Money based on gold is subject to the vissisitudes of gold price fluctuations, and can’t be divorced from those massive fluctuations.
2) Paper notes have no intrisic value either. In this they are the same as gold.
3) While the world used gold and silver coinage, massive economic upheavals were commonplace, as in the modern age. Economics is not based on the medium of exchange, but the nature of those exchanges. The medium is irrelevant, as it is merely a symbol. We dont’ even use currency half the time. We use bank cards. We don’t have actual money, we have electronic records of phantom values which, if we chose, we could exchange for paper currency, much as when paper currency began, you could exchange paper currency for gold. One symbol abstracts its value from the symboilc value of the previous symbol on which it’s based.
4) Basing money on gold is the same general concept as saying that in order to accept the universe as is, it has to be based on a creator’s efforts. Why do we need to regress one step? Why do we need to say “this arbitrary symbol has no meaning, unless it is attached to another inherently meaningless symbol”. If money has no value, gold has no value, but money based on gold has value? its irrational and a fallacious argument.
5) Why gold and not emeralds? Why gold and not 200 year old sections of redwoods? Why gold and not moondust? What does gold have to do with value? Nothing. Any of these alternatives would work. You could buy 1 trillionth of a gram of moon dust for 1$, say. Since you can’t get 1 trillionth of a gram, though, you’d accept the dollar as a symbol of the dust. The nyou’d just accept the dollar as a symbol of what it can buy (a chocolate bar, a can of pop, 10 wine gums, half a container of milk, a newspaper, etc…) and what it took to earn it (6 minutes of work in a call center, .5 minutes of work in a factory) Gold is as arbitrary a symbol as paper. (emeralds are rarer than gold, and rarer than diamonds. They would seem to make a great currency, of course, since emeralds are useless, they can’t be considered something to be bartered for intrinsic value. They would have to remain symbolic, like most currencies)
6) The only currency i know that was based on intrinsic value was salt. Salt was a) hard to mine, and b) necessary for the survival of human life in warm climates. The roman soldiers were paid in salt, becasue of its rarity, and utility. Salt has intrinsic value to humans. We can not live iwthout it. IN the dystopian post apocalyptic future, no doubt water will be a currency. The fremen used tokens to represent the volume of water that belonged to them, kept communally in vast tanks of water. Those tokens were money, but they represented a valuable object, water, necessary for human life.

This leads to the quest, why not base currency on something with intrinsic value?

The title of this article is gold double standard, because gold backers decry paper money as meaningless and having only symbolic value, value because we say it has value, fiat currency, but then don’t criticize gold for the same reasons. Even worse, immagine a currency sytem based on a truly finite resource? Imagine we had found all the gold there is on the earth, so all gold in circulation today was ALL THERE EVER WOULD BE. the population would continue to increase, but the arbitrary medium for all value on earth, gold, would never increase. Every person’s slice of the pie would shrink. Wealth would remain constant, while the percentage of people benefitting from it would decline. Black market currencies would inevitably surface (as has happened in recorded history when government coinage failed to service th eneeds of the economy), and yet another symbolic system of currency would arise to replace one where dogmatic religious conviction was allowed to ruin the world economy.

In the end, that’s what it is. Its dogma. No one is willing to consider these issues in the gold backers camp. They beg the question of whether gold has value or not. They ignore it. The assumption in the premise of the debate is that gold has value, objectively, so why not use it as the basis of currency? That’s the definition of begging the question. The debate is is not why we don’t use gold, but whether gold possesses the inherent value its ascribed. If it doesn’t, what difference would it make moving to gold? In this case, the only difference, if any, would be negative. The world’s wealth would decline by a factor of 10 or more. We’d all be broke overnight. In one swoop. Or, conversely, gold’s value would be artificially inflated so that 1 oz would be worth 70000 dollars, that way the small gold supplies held by each nation would represent the GNP the countrry had before the change. Then posessors of gold would be rich overnight, while possessors of money would be broke, unable to buy the tiniest fragment of gold. Only survivalists and catastrophists would benefit, while people who actually spend their money and support the economy would be screwed outright.

So yes, let’s switch to a gold coinage. I can think of no finer way to ruin the entire planet in one swoop.

This argument seemed irrelevant to him though. As numerous peoples of other religions, and a horde of atheists, celebrate christmas, as a cultural or social holiday, like mother’s day, halloween, labor day, or easter. Whatever their origins, what religious value do they possess these days?

None, i argue. If you feel differently, please tell me so. If you agree, please tell me so.