Band Aid is back. This time, with fewer Christmas bells, and more self-righteous celebrity primping. Can a song do real damage? Oh, yes it can! By RICHARD POPLAK.
The video clip opens with an astonishing montage: a helmet-mounted camera follows two Hazmat-suited health workers into a filthy shack, toward a black woman lying on a putrid mattress. Cut to a full shot of the woman on the bed, wearing only a bra and a skirt, her pose almost sensuous. Cut to the Hazmats carrying another nearly naked corpse gingerly, as one would an explosive device, toward a doorway and out into the light. A sudden, vertiginous jump cut: a wall of paparazzi, cameras flashing. A famous man alights from a limousine, a mop of gray hair momentarily obscuring his features. More famous people, some briefly posing for the cameras, one of them wearing a name-brand emblazoned across his chest—Adidas! They enter a mansion or a hall or a place of worship, and chat amicably.
Then they start singing.
The video is, in fact, a sequel. The original is 30 years old almost to the day, and barring the opening shots of the dead women and the Hazmat disposal team, both clips are almost identical, with one vital difference. In the original, the opening shot reveals a full-page newspaper article, with a picture of famous musicians above the headline “Band Aid”. The newspaper is a key detail, for it tells us everything we have ever needed to know about the celebrity benevolence industrial complex—it has always been an exercise of fame’s most important prerogative: power. Because celebrity is only capable of celebrating inwards, whenever the famous deploy the full force their fame—no matter the cause and regardless of the intention—they will always end up the beneficiaries. Fame is a closed loop; it shines its light only upon itself.
The original Band Aid project was devised by Irish Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof, after he watched a BBC report covering the Ethiopian famine of 1984. Geldof was apparently so moved by the terrible images he saw on television that he contacted Midge Ure of Ultravox, who began diddling with a synthesizer at his kitchen table. “I started messing around with a little bell sound and it was instantly Christmassy,” Ure would later say. Geldof popped round, they had tea, strung some lyrics together, called it “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” They formed a collective including the biggest names of the day, and the following day recorded the bestselling single of all time, which between the years of 1984 and 2004 raised $230m “for aid to Africa”, according to The Economist.
Band Aid did more than that, though. It earned Geldof a knighthood, and taught another of its members, Bono, that a mixture of fame and charity can lead to the most sanctified halls of power—lunches with presidents, dinners with the Dalai Lama, tea with God. It proved, once and for all, that celebrity could remap the world, and that power led to more celebrity, and celebrity to more power. The planet was suddenly a narcissist’s playground. There was nothing fake, nothing imagined about Band Aid’s impact. “The power of the song is still felt today," Ure recently said. “There was something real and honest and genuine about it. It’s not the greatest song in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but as a record, it moved mountains.”
Sadly, Ure is wrong on two points: “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is a vile piece of music—a song so bad that it should have been junked with maximum derision by the press, a novelty song in which the surfeit of fame was the novelty. Thankfully, there was the (very) occasional musician with balls enough to rip the song a new one.
“I'm not afraid to say that I think Band Aid was diabolical,” said Morrissey. “Or to say that I think Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Many people find that very unsettling, but I'll say it as loud as anyone wants me to. In the first instance the record itself was absolutely tuneless. One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it's another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of Great Britain. It was an awful record considering the mass of talent involved. And it wasn't done shyly; it was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music.”
Watch: Do they know it's Christmas? (1984)
But for the most part, Geldof et al were protected from criticism by about 14 million starving “Africans”, and if bad taste is almost always a sign of bad morals, in 1984—just as in 1984—it was easy to use nightmares in order to prop up power. Many African countries were in bad shape, years of tanking commodity markets, cold war politicking and shitty governance had left them deeply in the red. From where Geldof was sitting, the continent was a blank slate to be re-colonised by celebrity-endorsed Love, a big wasteland that could question neither his motives nor his musical sensibilities.
And if Band Aid “moved mountains”, where did the mountains move to? Which is another way of asking: where did those quarter billion dollars go? In the case of the Ethiopian famine of 1984, most of the international aid was left to the Derg to administer. (We didn’t learn about the Derg in “Do They Know?”, but they were the largely unlovable commie tinged junta running Ethiopia at the time). In other words, the very regime starving its people into submission for political reasons was handed the keys to the food aid trucks. In this, the famine was not properly a famine, but rather a case of weaponising food. Anyone who waded into the situation from afar and tried to help became immediately complicit in the massacre of over a million Ethiopians, simply by handing the Derg more ammunition in a war in which food was the ammunition. “Every time it's worked,” Geldof recently told the BBC (this is not the first time that Band Aid has been revived.) “Without question, without any shadow of a doubt, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions alive today who would have died of hunger."
Africa, where “millions” can be saved without the data proving their salvation.
Nothing is simple, yet if Band Aid taught the celebrity benevolence industry anything, it was that simplicity is essential in “raising awareness”. But what “awareness” did Geldof and Co. “raise”? They painted a remarkably durable portrait of an abject continent, conflating 14 million at-risk Ethiopians with “Africa” in a way that has been nearly impossible to erase. I want to be very clear here: because of the song’s massive and lasting popularity, it created an Africa for a generation of Westerners. It wasn’t the only mediated version of the continent, but it was by far the biggest. It wiped away any number of possible Africas, and raised an inviolable sculpture of a place of no hope.
The impact, again, plays out in real time—when I’m asked to speak to investors around the world about African countries’ economic possibilities, I stun them with my tales of a vibrant, growing, changing continent. “Do They Know?” has come up more than a dozen times in post-conference drinks—it certainly raised awareness, and that awareness has been near impossible to unraise. “How could a people ignorant of Christmas sort themselves out to such an extent that their economies are growing by over five percent a year?” wonder my baffled interlocutors. While I would like to know how much real money—not unreal aid money—has Band Aid robbed from the continent in lost tourism and investment?
I’d wager it’s more than half a billion.
Anyway, here we are again—Sir Bob has assembled a bunch of luminaries for BandAid30, this time in service of raising money to fight Ebola. The song, which debuted last Sunday on BBC’s X-Factor, has been slightly tweaked: instead of "Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you," we get the borderline pedophilic (and certainly unsanitary),"Well tonight we're reaching out and touching you." The sheer musical and intellectual indolence of the whole project is summed up by that one revision—a ghastly lyric exchanged for an indefensible one.
The signature line itself has been panel-beaten into, "How can they know it's Christmas time at all?" And who are “they”? This time, Geldof has insisted on specificity: West Africa, where “a kiss of love can kill you, and there’s death in every tear.” The problem, once again, is that Ebola (which goes unmentioned, as did famine in the original) does not bedevil West Africa, but three West African countries. You are less likely to contract Ebola in Togo than you are in Dallas, while the beleaguered people of America (or Spain, or India) go unsung. It doesn’t seem fair.
This time, there are simply no excuses. Geldof, Bono and their friends have had three decades to become functional adults. And while this Band Aid is a more muted, carefully politically correct affair—I doubt mountains of coke were consumed as they were after the initial recording in ’84—that does nothing to dim its essential evil: the gargantuan world-swallowing holier-than-thou desire of the famous to help while simultaneously increasing their fame.
And so we must ask: who are the dead women in the re-upped video’s opening sequence? What are their names? Where are they? Did they want to be seen in only their undergarments? Did they sign off on appearing in the video before dying an agonising death? Did their families sign off on their behalf? Why is there no dateline? And why do their corpses lead in to an image of Sir Bob emerging from a limo on a London high street, his stringy gray coif nonetheless suggestive of expensive hair product, while paparazzi cameras blaze away?
Those images were chosen and used in succession for a reason: nameless dead Africans must be sacrificed on a video-pyre to celebrate the greatness of the New Gods. “Africa”, wherever it may be, is a construct upon which reputations are forged. Saintliness requires simplicity. And if Ethiopians went hungry in ’84, at least fame’s insatiable hunger was fed. Ebola allows the feeding to continue: "From what we've seen from iTunes, it's gone bonkers," Bob recently told the BBC of the song. “Within four or five minutes we had a million quid.”
Man, that must feel good, having written the narcissist’s anthem, and killing it on iTunes.
Anyone who treats the ghastly deceptive lying prick still known as Morissey(*) as a serious source for, well anything at all, just gets a custard pie from me. His comments about de-contextualisation are laughable - especially given he wasn't even around at the time. Band Aid and Live Aid were about actually giving a flying fuck. His bitchfest misses this out under a lake of overwrought handwringing snark.
The world is a different place and this dick is a temporal fascist, viewing the milleau of the mid 80's through 2014 whinier-than-thou hipsterese and as a loss, an opportunity to discuss what IS needed and appropriate for dealing with Ebola gets turned into this guys clickbait.
I think this BandAid30 single is counter-productive, The original Band Aid idea was not Geldof's, it was Paula Yeats, whose daughter with Geldof, Peaches was lost to a heroin overdose this year; so I have compassion for him, but none for this self-inflating windbag.
After a seven-day hearing, Judge Weeks found in favour of Joyce, ordering that he receive around £1 million in back-royalties and 25 per cent henceforth. The judge also volunteered character assessments of the four antagonists, which were highly favourable to Joyce and Rourke (who gave evidence in Joyce's support):
He said of Mr. Joyce and Mr. Rourke that they had impressed him as straightforward and honest. He continued: "Mr. Morrissey is a more complicated character. He did not find giving evidence an easy or happy experience. To me at least he appeared devious, truculent and unreliable where his own interests were at stake." The Judge was also critical of Mr. Marr as seeming to the Judge to be "willing to embroider his evidence to a point where he became less credible." He concluded that where Mr. Morrissey's evidence differed from that of Mr. Joyce and Mr. Rourke, he preferred that of Mr. Joyce and Mr. Rourke.[41]
The judge also ranked the band members by IQ, with Marr "probably the more intelligent of the four", Rourke and Joyce "unintellectual", and Morrissey presumably somewhere in between.(LULZ)[44]
Searcher08 » Thu Nov 20, 2014 2:16 pm wrote:Band Aid and Live Aid were about actually giving a flying fuck. His bitchfest misses this out under a lake of overwrought handwringing snark.
They were about giving a flying fuck in a very particular way - looking good while doing good. Pointing that out might be trivial - a matter of style, or a comment on the personalities of rock stars. It might also be unnecessary bitchiness over what is fundamentally a good deed, as you see it - although if the Band Aid money did go to Mengistu's Derg junta (I didn't know that, not sure if it's true) it certainly was not. But there's this, which is really important:
Richard Poplak wrote:But what “awareness” did Geldof and Co. “raise”? They painted a remarkably durable portrait of an abject continent, conflating 14 million at-risk Ethiopians with “Africa” in a way that has been nearly impossible to erase. I want to be very clear here: because of the song’s massive and lasting popularity, it created an Africa for a generation of Westerners. It wasn’t the only mediated version of the continent, but it was by far the biggest. It wiped away any number of possible Africas, and raised an inviolable sculpture of a place of no hope.
International relations with Africa continue to be coloured by that "sculpture of a place of no hope," which has very harmful effects. All the aid that goes to Africa is less by several orders of magnitude than the money we lose to transfer pricing and competition with susbidised American and European agricultural products. But Western NGOs, by and large, don't push for more equitable trade policies - they ask for charity. And get it. And Western governments are quite happy to give out a few million in programme support when BP and Total and so on continue to rake in billions upon billions. Another immensely irritating conceit that is in evidence here is what Africans call "Africa is a country" - the use of Africa as shorthand for squalor and famine, with no effort to make dinstinctions between the very different countries in Africa. Which is evident again with the Ebola outbreak - I just recently read an infuriating thing about some American rapper who got treated like a fucking hero because he "braved Ebola" by travelling to Tanzania.
Mabye the 1984 BandAid came from a good place, but there's no excuse for that bullshit now.
1 What was the motivation and process involved around Band Aid in the mid 80s? the other and 2 Did Band Aid have a positive lasting difference? and 3 What is happening / should happen in the future?
My point about 1 is that the author of the article is implying that celebrities 'getting exposure' was a key factor in getting Band Aid together. That is utter bollocks. What got it together was Geldof being in a state of incandescent anger and disgust over Michael Buerk's report on the BBC (which is regarded by some as the single greatest piece of TV Journalism) and it being channelled into Paula Yates's suggestion.
The author's response for me sounds like the bullshit from a Critical Theory term paper. Many people I know became more involved with Africa in different ways after that and (in my circles anyway) there was no 'creating an Africa for a generation of Westerners' What RUBBISH!.
2 and 3 I think Development is not a problem, it is a 'problematique'.
Problematique
Problematique is a term that functions analogously to the research problem or question used typically when addressing global systemic problems. The term achieved prominence in 1970 when Hasan Özbekhan, Erich Jantsch and Alexander Christakis conceptualized the original prospectus of the Club of Rome titled "The Predicament of Mankind".[2] In this prospectus the authors designated 49 Continuous Critical Problems facing humankind, saying "We find it virtually impossible to view them as problems that exist in isolation - or as problems capable of being solved in their own terms... It is this generalized meta system of problems, which we call the 'problematique' that inheres in our situation."
Situations similar to the global problematique in their complexity are also called problematiques. These situations receive different designations from other authors. C. West Churchman, Rittell and Weber, and Argyris <Argyris, C. (1968)<Some Unintended Consequences of Rigorous Research. Psychological Bulletin, pp. 185–197.> call these situations wicked problems. Russell Ackoff simply called them "messes.'"
Development structures are set-up like in 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' by all accounts a Global Finance Capital extortion scheme. And worthy of another thread.
The article leaves me with a bad taste because if something as huge as 14 million people starving happened, this guy would be all over any attempt to do something spraying it with PoMo BS
Searcher08 » Thu Nov 20, 2014 2:16 pm wrote:Band Aid and Live Aid were about actually giving a flying fuck. His bitchfest misses this out under a lake of overwrought handwringing snark.
They were about giving a flying fuck in a very particular way - looking good while doing good. Pointing that out might be trivial - a matter of style, or a comment on the personalities of rock stars. It might also be unnecessary bitchiness over what is fundamentally a good deed, as you see it - although if the Band Aid money did go to Mengistu's Derg junta (I didn't know that, not sure if it's true) it certainly was not. But there's this, which is really important:
Richard Poplak wrote:But what “awareness” did Geldof and Co. “raise”? They painted a remarkably durable portrait of an abject continent, conflating 14 million at-risk Ethiopians with “Africa” in a way that has been nearly impossible to erase. I want to be very clear here: because of the song’s massive and lasting popularity, it created an Africa for a generation of Westerners. It wasn’t the only mediated version of the continent, but it was by far the biggest. It wiped away any number of possible Africas, and raised an inviolable sculpture of a place of no hope.
International relations with Africa continue to be coloured by that "sculpture of a place of no hope," which has very harmful effects. All the aid that goes to Africa is less by several orders of magnitude than the money we lose to transfer pricing and competition with susbidised American and European agricultural products. But Western NGOs, by and large, don't push for more equitable trade policies - they ask for charity. And get it. And Western governments are quite happy to give out a few million in programme support when BP and Total and so on continue to rake in billions upon billions. Another immensely irritating conceit that is in evidence here is what Africans call "Africa is a country" - the use of Africa as shorthand for squalor and famine, with no effort to make dinstinctions between the very different countries in Africa. Which is evident again with the Ebola outbreak - I just recently read an infuriating thing about some American rapper who got treated like a fucking hero because he "braved Ebola" by travelling to Tanzania.
Mabye the 1984 BandAid came from a good place, but there's no excuse for that bullshit now.
Last edited by Searcher08 on Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
Searcher08 » Thu Nov 20, 2014 2:16 pm wrote:Band Aid and Live Aid were about actually giving a flying fuck. His bitchfest misses this out under a lake of overwrought handwringing snark.
stefano » Thu Nov 20, 2014 10:17 am wrote:They were about giving a flying fuck in a very particular way - looking good while doing good. Pointing that out might be trivial - a matter of style, or a comment on the personalities of rock stars. It might also be unnecessary bitchiness over what is fundamentally a good deed, as you see it
stefano » Thu Nov 20, 2014 10:17 am wrote:International relations with Africa continue to be coloured by that "sculpture of a place of no hope," which has very harmful effects. Another immensely irritating conceit that is in evidence here is what Africans call "Africa is a country" - the use of Africa as shorthand for squalor and famine, with no effort to make dinstinctions between the very different countries in Africa. Maybe the 1984 BandAid came from a good place, but there's no excuse for that bullshit now.
Stefano, before I finished reading the OP I formed a similar opinion to Searcher's. Reading Poplov's bio served as my confirmation.
First, he was born in 1990, six years after the event. At the time although there had been news reports of the Eritrean genocide by starvation induced by Ethiopia, from whom Eritrea was seeking independence, there was little being done to offset the famine. (Eritrea had been annexed by Ethiopia in 1962.)
There's much to be admired in any celebrity that works even ineffectively to lessen human suffering. They are doing more than sharing their opinions on a blog.
That said, I personally don't like Geldof. And yes, I do know the man. I only learned the lyrics to "I hate Mondays" after really listening to it after reading about it here. (For the longest time I only paid attention to the music being played while not hearing the lyric's message. I doubt I can recall the names and music of 20 songs.) When this favorite of mine was revealed for what it was, a song about a school massacre, it took on a much darker truth, rather than the pleasant ditty I had in my head.
Hands Across America was related to Band-Aid. I was chosen to be on the steering committee that was charged with developing a plan to appropriately utilize the $250K New Yorker's raised; a pitifully small amount of cash with which to demonstrate a method to reduce hunger.
I authored the proposal. It was a two-part demand, A or B must be chosen.
Because the funding was tiny, we decided the best model would be to establish a fund, (with the North Star Fund) and let it grow while we accepted applications for funding from different sources and after examining them for their meaningful impact, award totally no more than 25% of the monies raised the first year while interest grew and more funds were raised. That's plan A. Plan B was only on the table after A had been set aside. Plan B was to hold a lottery and hand the cash over to those few poor lucky enough to have learned about the giveaway.
So, HoA (Geldof) denied the opportunity to put cash raised by volunteers directly into the hands of the hungry poor and thought the pittance of monies raised as the fruit of his commendable efforts unworthy of growing larger for greater impact.
The problem was, as I was told by a leading figure in the Hunger biz, was that I had an anti-poverty background and not an anti-hunger background.
The absurdity of what he said floored me and forced an immediate response, "You do understand people are hungry because they are to impoverished to buy food, don't you?" Simply mind-blowing!
But understandable from one who believes charity can solve all the world's ills. We, most of us, all but two, resigned en masse. A woman professor from Hunter and John Mohawk stayed on. And the funds went to food banks, the very institutions of charity we had desperately sought to dismantle.
It's simple, really. There is a tremendous mount of money given to food banks and pantries. We would rather see it given directly to the poor to help feed their families. The way it now is, if you're hungry in the USA, you'll have to beg for food for your family.
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is Geldof wanted the monies spent quickly. If the Hunger biz folk got it, hey, who could argue it wasn't helping much of anyone? Hey, they give food to poor folk, don't they, so it must be helping somewhat, no? No.They are now the representatives for and the voices of our hungry. And now near impossible to dismantle, so our future anti-poverty folk will have a damned difficult job being heard above the roar of the hungry biz money-grabbers.
I'd like to see 5% corporate giving from profits. And none to PACS. Should be a mandatory cost of doing business as the numbers of our poor and homeless grow. De-institutionalize poverty and dismantle the institutions that feed off the misery of our poor.
(For some reason the link to the North Star Fund won't allow me to keep the site open and immediately goes to a MS connection Error message after it appears momentarily. Perhaps it will function properly for you?)
Most def a rip on Geldof. We need more like Geldof, imo, even if he is a jerk. We have enough muck-rakes conveying hatred, absent of sound reason. C'mon, when has it ever been in good taste to bad mouth someone putting forth an effort to alleviate suffering?
Doubt anyone would be badmouthing Harrison had he lived on to do another concert similar to that he organized Bangladesh 30 or 40 years later.
Iamwhomiam » Thu Nov 20, 2014 6:57 pm wrote:There's much to be admired in any celebrity that works even ineffectively to lessen human suffering. They are doing more than sharing their opinions on a blog.[...] We need more like Geldof, imo, even if he is a jerk. We have enough muck-rakes conveying hatred, absent of sound reason. C'mon, when has it ever been in good taste to bad mouth someone putting forth an effort to alleviate suffering?
You're right, of course. The most important point here is that the organisations and governments fighting Ebola need money, quickly, and Geldof is in a position to raise money quickly. The other concerns about aid-versus-trade, the perceptions of Africa in the West, and the vanity that colours initiatives like this are secondary, and really almost trivial in the context of what's happening right now.
Searcher08 wrote:Development structures are set-up like in 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' by all accounts a Global Finance Capital extortion scheme. And worthy of another thread.
Yes. And that's why these issues are important in a long-term context - the way African emergencies get treated is not unrelated to the way Iam describes charity operators as unwilling to give money to poor people in New York (or, actually, Jesse Jackson's bit in one of those clips IanEye posted - "international relations should be based on mutual respect"). The way it works now is too often a mirror of how Iam describes food banks in the US - disempowering and seriously harmful to attitudes on the part of both the giver and the receiver. When it isn't an outright cynical process of corruption and PR to disguise the rapine that continues behind it, with the Western rich looting the place, giving a bit of the action to local pols, and more modest Westerners giving a bit back. The discussion about this has started and people feel strongly about it - which is probably what's behind Poplak's vitriol (especially since he can't remember the 80s - didn't realise he was that young), and the reason why I liked his piece.
There is a debate to be had on that, but it definitely should be more measured than his piece to be in good taste. Although I do sometimes fancy a bit of bad taste.
Searcher08 wrote:The article leaves me with a bad taste because if something as huge as 14 million people starving happened, this guy would be all over any attempt to do something spraying it with PoMo BS
There's a serious hunger crisis coming down the pipe in South Sudan, oddly uncovered in Western media. Odd, that is, when you look at the coverage given to Darfur - this year's war in South Sudan has been worse than Darfur. No Arab baddies this time though, and I don't think Washington has picked a side.
Iamwhomiam » Thu Nov 20, 2014 9:57 am wrote:It's simple, really. There is a tremendous mount of money given to food banks and pantries. We would rather see it given directly to the poor to help feed their families. The way it now is, if you're hungry in the USA, you'll have to beg for food for your family.
Thank you for the insight into the hunger vs poverty issues.
I don't know if it is still the way it was, but the few times I had to rely on food pantry-type largesse the food supplied was very cheap, adulterated, commercial boxed and canned, all sugar, flour and crap oils that I couldn't even eat now with my issues. It's all lowest common denominator stuff and probably part of the problem with the poverty/obesity balance. Begging sums it up. Also add the indignity of having to ask for that food from institutions like churches who often ply various levels of soft and hard sell of their presumed spiritual wares as part of the deal. I think people could make better choices on their own given the money to do so.
,,,
As for Geldof, if he can raise awareness, fine, although if he doesn't immediately raise awe in people not of my generation, I cannot say I blame them, he certainly is not a musical giant as Harrison was or even Bono, for that matter. If he has to prove his relevance again, so be it. I have watched many of these efforts over the years and have become a bit cynical about their ability to change things after seeing where much of the money and supplies wind up. It also becomes evident that it is all just a piss in the bucket and that won't change until politics and larger economic culture does- a change that might preclude ginormous wealth generated from a 45 rpm single or it's equivalent.
Like the money thrown at Katrina or the Tsunami it salves the conscience, but unless one makes sure it gets into the hands of the recipients (or even an agency that genuinely aids them) it is really not doing much good. I hope they have learned from past mistakes and that the work is successful for the people they are trying to help.
“The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off”
During a recent ill-timed foray into retail work, I got to hear that song (I'm assuming the remake) on a loop (which I am assuming was timed on a algorithim reflecting customer turnover) about 3 times a day.
Why don't we speahead a "fund"? It wouldn't be all inclusive. But for every dollar we spend we donate a dime or even a quarter to this fund that can be drawn from freely when in need. Total trust function here. If someone donates a dime they won't miss it. But it could add up for those who hit upon harder times than normal. Say someone needs five dollars for something they at least take a dime for each dollar spent out of that fiver and that is $.50 placed back into the community fund which is open to anyone to draw from. Of course trust is a big deal here and my idealistic proclivities always get the best of me, but I would want it to be without oversight or control.
Say Twyla needs something, she takes it then returns the change. Same with me. Or anyone. No one should have to have "needs". It won't pay off. But it could come in handy when the needs are there in which as always it is always returned in small increments. Basically a tax, but free for all users to have at their disposal and totally voluntary.
It would never work. But maybe it would. Who the fuck knows. . .
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
Yeah mate they are, its been full on but so worth it. How about you and yours?
She is running around, chatting away, starting to know way to much about the world around her... yesterday she was climbing then jumping off a five foot high plastic car into a sandpit at our local shop - cos a four year old mate was doing it. Over twice her height and she didn't stop to think about it or give me a chance to stop her.
That is really scary - if she is gonna be that fearless for the rest of her life we'll have some sleepless nights and plenty of hospital visits. Makes me proud tho - she has got guts and doesn't hold back.
