Hamlet Today

Hamlet Today

Hamlet did not consider himself a ditherer but doing nothing but watch had enabled a scheming idiot to marry Hamlet’s mother, the Queen, and become King, quickly revealing he was a tyrant—seeking petty revenge on opponents, sending troops onto the streets and seas to round up immigrants and kill drug runners.  He insisted the Earth was flat and that immigrants came from the planet’s evil underside. 

Hamlet tried discussing all this with the new royal aides–but they were picked based on loyalty to the new King.  Any criticisms would be heard by the King, so Hamlet was careful, noting that the nation needed clean water, that deporting immigrants had strained the nation’s workforce.   The aides told him the nation was a steak they were cooking (analogy as insult, given Hamlet was vegan.) 

What should the young Prince do?  His nation needed him.  His mother needed him.  Hamlet asked his friends who responded that nothing destroys tyrants better than ridicule, so together they created a free online game, The King Wears No Clothes.  It was instantly popular. 

It had several quests based on the King’s actions and beliefs.  Players loved humiliating him in the safety of the game and knew he hated windmills.  The first quest was the King trying to sail off the flat Earth but finding no edge, followed by sharks until the crew mutinied and stranded him on an offshore windmill farm. 

The second had him join the military but he struggled to march and keep up, to follow orders, to not shoot comrades when angry until he was assigned as the solitary guard for a windmill farm.  The third had him seek the truth about himself, but it was a contradictory quest as he ended going in circles in a miniature golf course, with windmills on each hole.  By the end of a month, the nation was openly laughing at the new King. 

Tyrants cannot tolerate ridicule, so eventually he fled to the island of St. Helena (which had no TV, Wi-Fi or diet coke.)  His sycophants, having little public support, joined him and the island, under the weight of the amassed hot air, sank into the sea. 

The land was joyous again, Hamlet helping the Queen rule a united nation.  Hamlet raised a family and enjoyed life.  (Not the usual end for Hamlet, true, but these days we have enough tragedies.) 

No Kings Day

This year citizens took to the streets to demonstrate against the current administration with a No Kings Day (twice, but these are the times we live in.)  What about next year?  We will certainly have more No Kings Days, and in addition we could have:

No Bullying Day

No Personal Insults Instead Of Debate Day

No Sycophants Day

No Meathead Leader Day

No Killing Drug Runners Day

No Shooting Live Artillery Over Freeways Day

No Government Shutdown Day

No Abusive Rich Letches Day

and what might draw the biggest demonstrations:

I’m Embarrassed Who Leads Us Day

I add every day can be Cheeseburger Day.

Dorian Gray As President

Dorian Gray always wanted it easy.  He was born into wealth, dabbled in real estate and casinos, but often went bankrupt because he enjoyed stiffing contractors, spent too much on gold toilets, and working hard was not easy.  Dorian Gray always wanted it easy.  Dorian decided it was time to make a deal with the Devil—to extend his life and make everything easy.  The Devil was accommodating–despite telling Dorian he had no soul.

Dorian, deal under his belt, went into politics, which he found remarkably easy, and was elected President.  To keep the Devil happy, he agreed to halt scientific research, stop green projects, kill a few people and make the internet free for everyone.  Every once in a long while, Dorian would look at the Devil’s computer monitor on his desk which displayed a digital Dorian.  The portrait started out as he was but, as time went on the digital Dorian grew eerie, drooling, his grin ever deader every viewing. 

Unfortunately, the digital image was also available to anyone on a website the Devil set up.  Voters apparently did not care, dismissing Dorian’s moral depravity as a modest price for a leader who knew how to get stuff done.  As the months went by, the site was visited by millions.  When Dorian’s term was up, popular demand led to the digital image being put on a special Presidential coin.  Dorian’s body quickly withered, becoming the duplicate of his digital image.

When Dorian complained, the Devil told him Jeffrey was waiting. 

The Church Of Me

The Church Of Me

The nation was created by Christians fleeing religious persecution by other Christians, founding it not as a Christian nation (they had seen the danger in uniting Church and State.)  However, over hundreds of years the nation evolved, as did its religion, which was a new version of Christianity, dissolving the separation of Church and State.  The nation’s new religion?  The Church of Me. 

Traditional religions had shrunk: Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religions dwindled in the face of the Church of Me, whose main doctrine was: life is all about me (as you secretly believed, despite experience,) and, therefore, you deserved better.  Others suffer while you succeed?  Their problem.  Everyone recognized the inherent contradiction—throwing believers against each other—but to discuss it was heresy. 

No one knew who created The Church of Me.  It had no bureaucracy.  Believers, true to the religion, refused to donate (charities had disappeared.)  A true grass roots movement, it had led to a competitive society.  And the nation was at war with other nations—not physical war, which involved risks (and the nation had no Army, only drones—) but it had initiated tariff wars, trying to force export prices to drop and foreign investment to increase.  The nation’s economy plummeted. 

Eventually foreign investment increased so much that foreign nations owned most of the country.  They exported much of the nation’s food and minerals while lowering wages and decreasing health care.  When the nation’s citizens objected, the foreign nations informed them that, overseas, they had to do it because they also worshipped the Church of Me.       

Film Actors We Live With Who Die

Film Actors We Live With Who Die

Maurice began reading obits of famous people in his twenties.  Then, most died in their late sixties; now, in their early eighties.  The worst were actors he ‘knew’ for decades.  The very worst were actors he first saw as children, who aged as he did, and now died.  Reading obits had become tragic (if not for them for him.)    

It was different from other famous people.  He cared less about politicians and rich people.  Maybe it was because the actors specialized in relating.  Movie actors are our royalty.  We follow their fashions, their marriages, their successes and failures.  It was bad enough they died–but before him?  So young?  Were the actors not Maurice, in his fantasies?  Where else (outside of our daily lives) can we follow a person’s life, from childhood to death, watching on a big screen as they wither and wrinkle?    

Angela Lansbury was not too bad—she started as an adult.  He watched her go from 19 to 96.  But Brandon de Wildt, child star of TV and Shane?  Died at thirty.  Heath Ledger?  James Dean?  They were more disturbing than when a childhood friend died—they were all childhood friends. 

At first, reading the obits every morning was interesting.  Now, he woke with sorrow. 

He stopped watching films and only watched toons, whose characters never die.  When they did, like Wiley Coyote, they returned same as ever.  Maurice watched but it now felt hollow.

Shutdown Today

Arnold was super frustrated by the latest Government shutdown.  Such failures only happened in his country.  The shutdowns came when the parties refused to agree on the yearly Government spending bill.  Civil servants went unpaid, projects postponed, benefits stopped.  Many citizens viewed it as a news item.  It rarely affected them directly.  A big chunk of the public saw it as political incompetence and entertainment (though not always in that order.) 

Other countries could internally agree and compromise.  Why not Arnold’s?  He decided it was because his country was still in its Wild West stage—when pioneers swept over aboriginal lands, where the law was the gun.  Shutdowns were politicians facing each other at high noon on a dusty street.  Somehow, Arnold had to change his country’s culture. 

Being a talented neurobiophysicist (and a North American), he first tried technology.  He converted violent westerns into ones where conflict was resolved through negotiation.  It was a dud–viewers found the films boring.  They needed action.  Arnold desperately searched for a solution.  Eventually, he created one. 

Meanwhile…the shutdown continued to over 300 days.  Civil servants who had remained at work had to find paying jobs.  Many government-funded projects fell completely apart and trade was strange, no one regulating it–prices went up, then up again.  Air flight shrank to nothing, due to lack of air traffic controllers. 

Yet the average person remained unaffected, apart from being entertained by the nightly news, which now included a new reality TV show, Shutdown Today, a situation comedy with real politicians as the characters.  The jokes helped citizens endure the measles and polio pandemics.  Survivors replaced the Government with village councils, which began their meeting with having a laugh at the latest episode of Shutdown Today.  

When the broadcast networks fell apart, the public kept the series going through a Kickstarter campaign.  Rarely had a TV show hit helped people through a shutdown.  Honours were heaped upon the series’ writer.   

The writer was Arnold. 

Seeking The Nobel Peace Prize

The new President really really wanted to be given—to him, win–the Nobel Peace Prize.  He believed it would show the world what a wonderful person he was.  Peace, after all, meant a lot more to people than science and that other stuff.  He realized it was not a sure thing, given he had just sent troops into his nation’s main cities to stop crime, which was not the usual Nobel Peace Prize-winning approach.  Nor was having his Navy execute alleged drug runners instead of just arresting them.  Nor were his plans for new military satellites.  Nor his renaming the Department of Defence the Department of War. 

He tried renaming it the Department of Peace, but no one believed it.

The new President had his advisors read books about previous Peace Prize winners and then summarize them for him.  What he did learn was upsetting.  A distressing number of winners were not world leaders but regular folks who had done something extraordinary.  Worse, it usually took them years!  How was that possible?  Peace had to be easier than that Science stuff, it was just people not killing each other, for a while. 

He decided to do his own research, so he watched movies.  He thought Ghandi took forever and started skipping through, pausing at the violence.  Curiously, that was the only movie he found starring a Nobel Peace Prize winner, though he was convinced Henry Fonda should have won it for Fail Safe. 

Perhaps the committee of whoever they were in Sweden (or was it Norway?) did not understand what it took to be a Peace Prize recipient, so the new President had a guidebook prepared and delivered by his daughter-in-law and her team (that was more discrete than him flying over.)  He wanted to give them a public lecture but needed them friendly.  No response.

So he tried a newish public slogan, Peace Through Strength.  He had posters made up with that line on the bottom, the rest of the poster him wearing a sleeveless armoured vest to show off his muscled arms (photoshop) holding a machine gun.  The new President figured if that did not sway the Nobelists, what would?      

Turns out what swayed them was a woman in Venezuela in hiding for a year from the military because of her activism. 

The new President was very disappointed.  He increased trade tariffs to Sweden to 100% and made Volvos and Ingmar Bergman films illegal.  However, he did receive some satisfaction when the Nobel Committee created a new award and made him first recipient: Either Clueless Or Corrupt Leader of the Year.  (An odd award but the first in what became a yearly honour.)    

Porn Nazis

After the Nazis invaded a country one of their first acts was to spread pornography.  They knew there was nothing better for them than most of the captured country’s men jerking off at home.  It worked in every country except France (French men were already preoccupied.)  When the nation elected a new President, a millionaire whose background was often in failed real estate projects and bankrupt casinos, he followed through with his campaign promises: deporting aliens illegal and legal, eliminating science research and healthcare benefits, ending green projects and more—but he did not outlaw porn.  He railed against electric cars and vaccines, indeed.  But porn?  Not a word. 

Some citizens wondered but no one asked.  Porn was never discussed in polite society, after all.  It was consumed by polite society but never discussed.  As a result, no one knew the new President’s nouveau anew fortune came not from his bankrupt casinos and real estate projects but a vast network of porn sites.  Everyone did know about his gold toilets (but not about the gold rubber bed sheets and mirrors.) 

Yes, porn objectified and debased women–the new President was okay with that.  Early on he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals and the size of his penis, but he stopped that talk once elected—he did not want anyone associating him with sex, it might out his secret.  True enough, looking at him, no one ever associated him with sex. 

Power and money drove the new President.  He soon injected politics into his porn empire.  Women became bustier, with tighter clothes and longer hair, always submitting.  Men were shown in all shapes and sizes, using women.  The new President reshaped society into one he preferred: where more people watched more porn.   

Already the largest consumer of porn in the world, the nation devoured even more.  The new President had laws passed, limiting the work available to women–unless they had long hair and large breasts and pretty faces.  Eventually the nation’s productivity crashed through the basement and into the earth’s bowels.  Most everyone was obsessed with sex (the men, anyway) and living unsatisfying lives (the women, anyway.) 

The nation finally went bankrupt.  It and its citizens were purchased by other nations and turned into a gigantic brothel for tourists.  The new President?  Ever wealthier, he took his cut and retired to his mansion on Epstein Island.    

Civil War

The is the story of the collapse of the nation’s house.  The house was built on the ocean shore, on stilts, for the views.  It was meant to last forever.  Yet now the walls were broken and splintered, the roof leaked, the water pipes spurted, the furnace on the fritz.  No one could deny the nation had problems (yet they did.) 

The country always had mainstream political parties and smaller political cults but the internet helped make cults far larger, with millions of believers.  The cults focussed on blame.  Blaming past and present politicians.  Fostering conspiracy theories about politicians, the police, the health care industry—pretty much every group in society was the subject of some nasty conspiracy theory.  These cults were ripping the nation’s house apart. 

A new President rose to power based on the cults, ironically a reality TV star, who promised to reveal the truth, to clear the swamp.  He never did reveal the truth, never did drain the swamp.  The nation’s house was built on top of a beach now swampy.  The Government shut down, the two main opposing sides breaking into individual groups who could not agree with each other.  Civil war loomed. 

It was an unusual civil war. 

Such conflicts usually involve two opposing sides.  This civil war involved hundreds of opposing sides.  Armed groups roamed the streets, engaging in firefights.  News was all over the map, facts were difficult to find when everyone claimed their facts were the only true ones.  Productivity slowly to less than a crawl, few were at work, politics overtaking their lives.  Families broke up, relationships fell apart.  Civil war on the most fundamental level.  Eventually the nation ripped itself apart, settling into small villages where vaccine refusal was common and many died from smallpox. 

The nation’s house was hollowed out, no one living in it when the stilts finally broke and the house fell into the ocean, into the relentless sea. 

The New President’s New Halloween

The New President’s new Halloween was like no other.  In addition to young trick or treaters, he sent armed troops to major cities—not costumes, the real thing.  The troops had loaded automatic weapons and did not ask for candy (they had their own.)  It was a truly unusual Halloween, unusually scary.  Young trick or treaters came out and the troops interrogated them and then arrested some parents (for being in the country illegally.)  The children asking for treats were put into cages.  It was a unique form of trick or treat. 

The new President was committed to sending military troops into the nation’s cities.  He claimed to be concerned about crime but most citizens saw it as political—the targeted cities were mostly run by his opponents and crime there had dropped.  Some citizens were outraged and wanted to fight back.  They were told it was necessary and to remain calm and that their right to bear arms meant they could be sleeveless. 

Making The Most Of His Life

Arnold believed in making the most of his life and wished everyone felt the same.  Life was short and you got only one chance.  Any less than making the most of it was a waste.  He worked hard at his career, steadily if slowly advancing.  He helped his extended family.  He had several creative hobbies.  He was productive and felt responsible. 

Then it all fell apart. 

It started with covid and shrinking promotion prospects, continued with the new President and tough tariffs and extreme weather.  His children became skeptical teens.  His tropical fish got ick.  He saw making the most of his life being flushed down the toilet, his sense of purpose going with it.     

His solution?  Escape.  He read how in The Maltese Falcon.  From a friend with shady connections, he got new identity cards, then, after listening to a morning of arguing between his wife and children, walked out of the house when his kids demanded to buy some energy drinks and he never returned.  He escaped. 

Arnold took a plane to another part of the country and found work in his career (he was an accountant.)  He met a lovely woman and they married and had two children.  Again, he made the most of his life.  Eventually, of course, the adorable toddlers turned into angry teens.  Arnold realized he had made the same mistakes as before. 

But he made the most of life—twice.  What more could anyone dream of?

Stress

Angela’s work was tough.  At work, she managed people in a large corporation, responsible for their screw ups as well their failures.  It was work that ground her down no matter how hard she tried.   She brought the tension home.  Some evenings, everything her partner did was wrong, the place was filthy, the food tasted bad, her negativity was endless.   

She realized she was pushing people away. 

Her success gnawed at her, underneath.  Her career success and paycheque had short-changed her life.  How could she enjoy life when everything felt wrong around her?  She had to deal with her stress.  But how?  She made a list of nice things to say and do–left her uncomfortable. 

She did not want her story to end this way.  What she had to do was create a society where everyone supervised themselves, where a supervisor such as herself would be irrelevant.  She could–Angela was a distinguished psychoneurobiophysist.  She created a device sending out waves to influence the human mind, with one purpose: everyone would now take full responsibility for their actions.  They would supervise themselves. 

She had a long cryogenic nap and woke up ten years later, eager to see the results. 

Nothing had changed.  No, it was worse.  Most people insecure about supervising themselves and asked others supervise them.  It led to an authoritarian society, a King in power instead of an elected official.  Supervision now extended beyond work.  Mothers and fathers officially supervised their children until they were sixty-five.  Siblings supervised siblings.  Angela was grandfathered back to work only to find her supervision duties were more stressful than before.  Plus now she was the head of her extended family, responsible for twenty-four people, including brothers-in-law. 

Angela quit her job and opened a drycleaning store where she was the sole employee.  Her lesser income demoted her from leading her family (a bonus,) especially when it came to the brothers-in-law.  Her spare time was spent trying to create a new device to restore society, but she never found the key.  Because she tried, the authoritarian government locked her up. 

This also was not how she thought her story would end, spending the rest of her life making licence plates. 

The New President’s New Army

The new President had bone spurs which prevented him from being in the military, although he could still play golf, but he knew what the military should be: a glorious fighting force in his image.  So, when elected, he declared war was man’s work.  More, officers not white were promoted for woke reasons.  War was for white men, not women, at least the killing part, which required manly men doing manly stuff. 

He fired and demoted officers who did not meet his standards.  It was unclear what role physical strength played with high technology weapons, but only white men were up to the task.  Men who kept fit and shaved.  And weren’t gay.  And had blonde hair and blue eyes.  The list grew every day.  By the end of the first week, left were only a few hundred thousand acceptable warriors. 

That was not enough for a sustainable army.  But there were drones.  The Armed Forces focussed on drones, building more lethal ones until the new President realized his very best warriors were robots.  This gave him a great idea.  The new President had the brains of his best warriors transplanted into robots.  Robots which looked like him.   

There were complaints the new direction discriminated against white men, the reverse of what the new President had promised.  In response, he renamed the Department of War, which he had renamed from the Department of Defence, to be the Department of Death, sending them into the nation’s largest cities, where he had parades of them every month, saluting him (or an image of him.) 

None of the new soldiers had bone spurs.

Guns

Paul grew up with guns.  Not in his home, but on he saw plenty on TV and in movies.  Guns in the hands of good guys and bad.  Handguns, automatic weapons, sniper rifles.  Paul knew what an Uzi looked like by the time he was fourteen, though he’d never seen one in real life.  His real life had no guns.    

In his twenties, he purchased a lever action rifle, as he’d seen in westerns, to finally touch a gun.  He never fired it, played with it shooting imaginary bad guys—the lever action was cool– then put it in a closet and forgot about it.  He saw no sport in shooting living creatures but did respect those who hunted for food.  Through most of his life, shootings of people were rare (outside of war.)  Guns were for entertainment and people getting food.

But times had changed.  The other day, a man drove into a church, shot people inside and set it on fire.  His last use of his gun was on himself.  When Paul was seven, every weekday morning he walked ten city blocks to school by himself, feeling perfectly safe (he later learned he’d grown up in the worst gang section of Brooklyn.)  Never saw or heard a gun in real life.  That was then.  Now, people walked into schools and shot children.   

Paul was outraged.  How had his nation been assaulted by violence, by the hate which led to violence?  Guns could be purchased by almost anyone.  How could they be kept from the hands of those with tragedy on their brains, often ending by shooting themselves?  The sole practical solution Paul came up with was to make gunpowder inert so bullets could not be fired.  Not an easy task, unless you are a chemicalgeologicalopportunist (an unusual profession, to be sure.)  Paul created a device which, using cell towers, blanketed the nation.  The invisible waves instantly made all bullets duds. 

The result?  More tragedies caused by cars and trucks driving into people.  Cars became the new guns.  Then lawnmowers.  Then skateboards. 

Although Paul was profoundly dismayed, and saw nothing further he could do, he did appreciate the ingenuity.  As for the continuing violence, he sought solutions while staying at home as much as possible.  Unfortunately, one day he had to go to the supermarket when deliveries were unavailable.    

Donald

Donald was born into a rich family.  His father wanted him in real estate but he yearned for something concrete so he plowed his money into a company he could dedicate to his needs: a toy company.  He fired the key executives and hired only those whose opinion was “Yes.”  He fired those who said “No.”  Donald knew what he wanted. 

He wanted to manufacture wind-up gold-plated robot banks which saluted and shot rubber bullets.  The robots had holes in their heads for coins.  When he showed them his robot design, coloured gold, his staff applauded (although they thought it hideous.)  He launched the new line with videos showing the robots saluting and firing rubber bullets as Donald cried, “You’re fired!” 

The new wind-up robot was, to everyone’s surprise but Donald’s, a huge hit. Parents everywhere bought robots to salute them and shoot rubber bullets at them.  Turned out, most everyone wanted acknowledgement and the wind-up robots provided it (as long as you kept them wound up.)   

He added new toy robots.  The flame thrower robots were withdrawn after a number of unfortunate incidents, but the police officer robots in riot gear were very popular.  One Robot of Donald himself, smiling and waving its arms, was also a bank, with a hole in its head for coins. When the robot coin banks were full, owners were encouraged to send them to Donald, where the coins would be removed and the empty robots returned with a certificate of donation and improved wind-up springs. 

Donald emptied the coins into his home pool and swam in the money, surrounded by gold toy robots saluting him.