Bob Crespo

Even the people who practice it have no idea what aroma therapy is all about, but they figure that if anybody is dumb enough to pay money to smell stuff, what the hell, it would be wrong not to take their cash.

Today’s world has more news and more information available to the masses than anytime ever. The advent of the internet and cable TV have given people access to whole worlds of information that previously they would have  had to take a great deal of trouble to find. No more. At our fingertips is the greatest reference library in the world, right here, right now and no waiting in line. You want to know the population of Duluth Minnesota? (Why you would want to is another story and your own business.) Bam, look it up in seconds, maybe check the annual rainfall there too. You wonder who that street you live on is named for? Google the name and find out. There’s probably 700,000 entries on that person who merited streetdom, more information than you could ever hope to absorb. 

Say you are a fugitive financier, on the run with millions in stolen pension funds (a fairly common livelihood these days). You can look up extradition treaties or lack thereof in various Third World nations, the relative greed of your host government and even hook up with the best real estate dealers before you arrive, so your search for the perfect palatial seaside compound is narrowed considerably. You can even look up yacht dealerships in the Cayman Islands, an endeavor that previous generations of wealthy thieves had to do by trial and error. But there’s a limit to the information on the internet, with some glaring omissions. For example, here’s a list of things you might not find so easily:

GREAT UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH CENTERS FOUNDED WITH OIL REVENUES: Try as one may, the information about the oil-rich nations using their incredible incomes to improve the educational systems of their respective nations is pretty scarce. Also hard to find is any mention of these nations founding sustainable industries to employ and feed their people when the oil runs out or when some clever person figures out a viable alternative to burning the greasy remains of animals and vegetation. Similarly, other than mile-high towers being built just for the hell of it, most of the infrastructures of many of these nations appear to have remained the same as they were in the 1800s, all dusty roads and ramshackle housing, at least outside of a couple of showcase cities and tourist destinations.

UNITED NATIONS SUCCESS STORIES: The internet is also sorely lacking in data about successful U.N Peacekeeping missions. The news is full of horrible wars and genocide campaigns that could have been nipped in the bud but weren’t. You’ve got to wonder if those blue-helmeted peacekeeping armies with their truckloads of food and medicines have ever done anything but make a bad situation worse. Do these people carry guns? That’s pretty much what most armies have, but the U.N. troops never seem to use theirs to protect anybody from anything. Instead there’s no shortage of stories about the “peacekeepers” helping themselves to the local teenage girls and boys for their own sexual amusement. That’s not helping anybody.

MUSLIM LEADERS FOR PEACE: There are over a billion Muslims in this world, the vast majority of them no different from the vast majority of everyone else. That is; peaceful, law abiding and interested only in living their lives as best they can, providing for their families and trying to get ahead. Not too much drama and news in that. The squeaky wheels of terrorism and jihad seem to get all the publicity, what with them blowing people up, shooting them and declaring everybody they can think of to be the mortal enemies of their piss-poor idea of a God. You would think that a worldwide reaction to this by prominent religious and government Muslim leaders would be immediate and loud. An exhaustive search of the internet doesn’t seem to bear that out. The denouncements of terror, murder and warfare by influential Muslim leaders are few and far between. Where are these people’s spines? Or maybe they figure that if they shut up no one will notice that they hold in slavery half their population, the female half? There’s not too much data available on that either.

LAW ABIDING MOTORCYCLE GANGS: There’s no shortage of information about bully biker thugs ganging up on the vulnerable, shooting people, dealing drugs and firearms and generally behaving like cavemen on wheels. Almost everybody knows somebody who rides a motorcycle but has no gang, content to just enjoy their bike and ride around with like-minded friends from time to time, bothering no one else. These people seem to get no publicity at all. All the biker stories seem to be about big mean guys who are too afraid of life to stand on their own and so join a gang. Even respectable criminals look down on these dopes, figuring that if you are going to be an outlaw, don’t spend half your time trying to tell people that you are a part of some sort of harmless club, like you were in a bowling league or something. Not too many guys in bowling leagues wind up being featured on “America’s Most Wanted.” And not too many guys in outlaw biker gangs command the kind of respect they imagine they do, the kind that lasts after you leave the room. The kind they get is simply fear, a healthy fear of dangerous and unstable man/children. And when authorities lock these people up they can’t cry loud or long enough about how they are being unfairly singled out and persecuted. To which most of us say: “Well, boo-friggin-hoo, take it like the man you pretend to be. And do us a favor, don’t find God in prison and write a book about it.” 

LAW ABIDING CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY: Perhaps taking their cue from biker gangs and the Saudi royal family, the chief executive officers of just about any industry you can name have been behaving like thugs with suits for a couple of decades now. Not content with selling the jobs of the workers who made them wealthy to the lowest overseas bidder, these guys decided that having access to trillions of dollars of other people’s money was just too tempting to pass up. They made themselves into robber-princes, wealthy beyond gratification, soaring into the realm of greed for greed’s sake, stealing all they could simply because they could and nobody was watching the cash register. Why have a country house when you can have a country? Why own a Porsche when you can own a dozen? Why answer to laws like mere mortals? The law-abiding CEOs have long been forced out of the corporate suites, their only crime being not speaking out against their larcenous successors. And now these new corporate princes crawl to Uncle Sam begging to be saved from themselves. To which most of us say: “We hope you like your new room mate Big Pete the biker. You’ll have lots to talk about for the next 10 to 15 years. By the way, he’s writing a book and needs help with his spelling, grammar and literacy. Turn him down at your own peril.”

Sometimes it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Sometimes you wonder if events have gotten beyond your control. Here’s a clue: if you have to ask that question, they have. 

If you feel like giving up and want to surrender, don’t. There’s nobody to take you prisoner. 

If nobody notices you and no one seems to know your name, here’s an idea: Introduce yourself. If the problem persists, well, you’ve got some work to do in the personality department.

If you feel the need to do anything but exist to “keep it real,” either you’re prone to hallucinations or a complete idiot. Here’s a clue: The world is filled with tangible things and what’s happening around you is just what it appears to be. Your opinion on the color of the sky doesn’t make it any less blue. 

People who disagree with you are not necessarily bad people or stupid, any more than you are for not seeing things their way. There’s enough evil and stupid people to go around. Don’t go imagining more of them.

If you require “handlers” and you’re not a dancing bear or a mental patient, odds are you’re a politician prone to saying stupid things. Realize this: the vast majority of human beings don’t need to have the things they say approved by specialists or their actions carefully controlled. Get a grip.

Sometimes you say: “Why me?” Well, why not you? Do the math. Did you really think you were going to get through this whole ordeal in one piece?

What gets others mad or nervous isn’t necessarily your cue to share their feelings. Think for yourself. After the first couple of times it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Some people ask: If a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it fall, does it still make a sound? Here’s a clue: It sure as hell does! Those would be the stupid people who ask things like that. Don’t encourage them.

Some people are helpless. Help them.

Kindness is certainly not weakness, and often takes courage. Cruelty, on the other hand, is always cowardly. Here’s a handy tip: Be brave, be kind. Very often those who seem most undeserving of our love and kindness are those who need it most. It’s easy being nice to nice people. Take the next step. 

When enough people question your motives, odds are there’s something fishy about you. When that happens, ask yourself some hard questions. Being dead wrong would hardly be unprecedented for any of us. These things happen.

The deepest wounds are those that leave no scar. Bones knit and bodies heal, but sometimes souls are wounded forever. Mind how you treat your brothers and sisters. And who might they be? Anybody you ever run across. 

If you can’t laugh at yourself, don’t worry, there’s plenty of people willing to fill that void. Lighten up.

No one is a bigger bore than the easily bored.

Don’t complain about distractions. Upon these we build our lives. Not too many of us grow up to be the cowboy, the nurse, the movie star or the baseball player we dreamed of as children. Other things grab our attention and before you know it you’re living your life and it’s a pretty good one and damned interesting too. Keep your eyes wide open. You never know what cool things will present themselves. Don’t hesitate.

Give thanks for all you were given and all you were able to give.

I wish to thank all who visit these pages for their kindness and love and wish everybody joy and peace for the coming year. May the wind be at our backs and our loved ones be safe. Happy Thanksgiving.

The only way to avoid making mistakes is to never do anything. So, if you want to keep your record perfect, don’t do a damned thing. That’s one option.

You have to wonder if oil companies have a sales staff. And like any other large corporation, do they award their top performers prizes like a week in Santa Barbara or a wide screen TV or something? And you further have to wonder how you can get one of those jobs. The only easier gig for a sales person would be hawking insulin to diabetics. You could pretty much count on that golf outing to Santa Barbara every year with a job like that. What else are people going to buy to run their cars and heat their homes, wind? 

The world is full of puzzling questions. Here’s another: Is it possible yet in this world of A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) A.A.D.D. (the adult-strength version), Bipolar Disease and other newly minted syndromes, to get a custom-made disease diagnosed to explain away your own shortcomings? They could be called George’s Syndrome or Shiela’s Disorder (The dreaded G.S. and S.D.!) and have as their list of symptoms everything about you that rubs people the wrong way. That would be ideal. No need for self-improvemment there! “Hey, back off, people, I can’t help being a self-centered jerk! I have Jimmyitis, you know.” No longer would we need to waste valuable time working on our faults. 

Also looming large in the just wondering department are the disease-curing dynamos of science, as in “what-the-hell-ever-happened-to-those-people?” wondering. What, curing diseases turned out to be really brain busting activity so they decided to create phony new ones instead and “cure” them to pad the resume? Here’s a flash, Einsteins: you’re fooling nobody! Talk about your S.A.D.D. (Scientific Ability Deficit Disorder) situations.

Speaking of disappointing science, you also have to wonder what’s the deal with our space program, such as it is. What started out as an exciting adventure sure petered out pretty quick after we sent a few guys to the moon. Sent them almost forty years ago, that is! Was that the only goal, to visit what we already knew was basically a giant sterile boulder and bring back a few rocks? If memory serves, anybody who was paying attention at the time (that would be the entire world) recalls all sorts of exciting and daring plans on the drawing boards, from space stations to mining asteroids to colonizing the nearby planets as a stepping stone to the stars. 

Sorry, but was that boring anybody? And isn’t a whole lot of the world-transforming technology base that we use today the direct by-products of the space program? Things like micro-chips, ultra-miniaturization and fiber optics? (That would be a yes.) Before the space scientists got busy the average computer was the size of a post office and couldn’t do a tiny fraction of the things any laptop can do these days and the term “digital” referred to an unpleasant finger examination in the doctor’s office. You have to wonder if there’s some other fun and beneficial technology we might stumble across on our way to the great unknown, maybe find out that some of those asteroids are edible, delicious and cure cancer. You just never know. Who knew moon rocks would lead to iPods?

And finally, you kind of have to wonder about all the constant mention of the Middle East being “The Cradle of Civilization.” You know, that area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers chock full of Biblical history, which didn’t seem all that civil in the first place upon close examination. Seems like the civilized people left The Cradle a long time ago and got on with their lives, moving elsewhere where there are actual trees and fertile soil and the like. These days it seems more like The Tomb of Civilization. Those living there now don’t just seem to have the hang of civilized behavior, what with them slaughtering each other, chopping heads and hands off, enslaving their women and blaming the rest of the world for their enduring squalor.

And nobody ever accused the Middle East of being the Cradle of Comedy, that’s for sure. Check out the Bible and the Koran. Not too many distracting laughs get in the way of teaching us how to hate one another and slaughter our “enemies” (our fellow humans who look just like us) down to the last man, woman and child. And today? No stand up comics, no ensemble skit comedy, zero satire and no understanding of irony at all, with little but grim and bitter documentaries when it comes to movies. A real frown fest of a region. Yet another pressing reason for America to get out of the fix-the-Middle-East-with-yet-another-war business. It’s clearly only making these killjoys even more dour and hostile. They’ve already got no shortage of their own wars to fight between each other without our input.

Maybe sending over Dave Chappel and Larry the Cable guy would help (and just hope they don’t say anything that will get them lashed in a public square). One of these days somebody’s going to change the whole atmosphere over there by being really, really funny, one of their own. That will go a lot further towards making peace than a thousand treaties imposed by diplomats looking for Great Statesman points and big speaking fees and who don’t have to live there with the results of their fatal misreading of the situation. They really do have to lighten up over there. Let’s see… an Imam, a Rabbi and an Ayatollah walk into a bar, and the bartender says: “So, why the long faces?”  Hmmm… needs work…

Most people won’t bother to try to fix you. More likely, your telephone not ringing all that much is the only wake-up call you’re going to get when you screw up. Generally, the whole world is not wrong about these things, you are. Heed the deafening silence.

Here we are in the year 2008 once again wondering where the money went. The last time this happened on anything approaching the scale of the Financial Meltdown of 2008 we wound up calling it The Great Depression. Things were a bit different back then. For one thing, cocaine was legal but booze was not. For another, the guys responsible for the Crash of ‘29 took the blame they deserved for screwing up the American economy and it rained stockbroker suicides from the gleaming towers of Wall Street. Nothing says “I fucked up” like a 50 story swan dive to the pavement. 

That didn’t happen this time. These greedy goons looked America in the eye and and swore they didn’t do anything wrong. They blamed the government, they blamed each other, they blamed the news media (!) and some of these billionaires even had the balls to try to blame poor people. A few of them even tried to blame the lack of aggressive enforcement by various and regulatory police agencies that would have prevented them from stealing everything but the rubber bands from these publicly held corporations! And those are not even the most bizarre excuses they have offered. Check some of these out:

THE REALITY TV EXCUSE: One guy had the nerve to testify before Congress that he thought he was part of a reality show called “The Bosses,” about a bunch of loose cannon executives in competition to see who could blow a trillion dollars the quickest and he was cast as The Bad Boy. He said there was no way his job was on he level or the life he was leading was an actual one, with its $21 million dollar annual salary, all sorts of free stock, his own jet and a provision called a golden parachute where he’d get another $30 million if he got voted off the show. He assumed the Board of Directors were the show’s producers since the more crazy things he did with other people’s money, the more they encouraged and rewarded him with $10 million bonuses. He figured the crazier and more greedy he acted, the better would be the show’s ratings, so he went into overdrive and bought the Mona Lisa, a spaceship and several small nations for himself with company funds.

THE ETHICS DEFICIT DISORDER EXCUSE: One CEO cited new scientific studies identifying a new disease called EDD, short for Ethics Deficit Disorder (a.k.a. Special EDD), striking con men, jewel thieves, mob bosses, dictators and middle aged executives with a God Complex. Symptoms include dishonesty, insatiable greed, colossal egotism, manipulation of earnings statements, unaccountability and an insatiable desire to accumulate wealth by any means necessary. He came to Congressional hearings with a doctors note, telling investigators that this explained his baker’s dozen mansions, his personal aircraft carrier and his collection of rare and exotic supermodels.

THE PATRIOTIC EXCUSE: This one’s a beaut, cited by the former head of a former bank. He testified that he was only doing what the government was doing, running up the highest possible deficit he could for his company, his stockholders and by God, his nation! To underscore his patriotic fervor, he arranged for aides to erect a giant American flag made of spun platinum as a backdrop while he testified and displayed photographs of Ronald Reagan, Bush The Younger and Herbert Hoover, citing them as “The Holy Trinity of Deficit Disciples.” This turned out to be a great ploy since the Congressmen holding the hearings were so creeped out that they declared the man innocent by reason of insanity.

THE RAPTURE EXCUSE: It seems that politics is not the only place where the oddball theology of Bible Belt Christian Fascists has taken root. A number of CEOs have stated under oath (with a straight face, no less) that they were behaving the way they did because they did not expect the system to last out the decade since Jesus was coming back any day now to slay the wicked, the nonbelievers, the liberals and the poor. Citing their constitutional right to freedom of religion, these guys told the Congress that they would be sorry for doubting God’s messengers real soon when fire and brimstone rained down on their Antichrist asses. When asked why they felt the need to steal everything they could and ruin their nation’s economy and that of the entire world too, they said they were humbly doing their part in fulfilling prophecy by creating the chaotic conditions that would usher in The Rapture. One of them further stated that he was investing his company’s money in ways to create worldwide earthquakes, tidal waves and catastrophic volcanic eruptions. This man was quietly escorted from the building to a secure rest facility and is currently heavily sedated.

THE FUCK YOU EXCUSE: In perhaps the only breath of fresh air and the only honest words to pass the lips of the top executives, one man told the nation, the Congress and the world to “Go fuck yourself, I got mine!” He said he did what he did because he could and for no other reason. “There was nobody to stop me,” he reasoned, citing the lack of regulations, oversight, investigations into all the laws he broke or even the hint of mild agitation over his openly illegal activities. “I was operating in a vacuum of supervision and accountability, making up my own rules as I went along, so long as they benefitted yours truly. If they did not, I changed them. Right now I have more money that the whole Congress put together, so go ahead and close my company and fire me. I unloaded that toilet paper that is its stock long ago at an incredibly inflated price and bought Krugerrands! Drop friggin’ dead!” In one of the more embarrassing moments of the Congressional hearings, this speech drew a thunderous standing ovation from the rest of the CEOs waiting to testify, lasting a full twenty minutes while they demanded a curtain call. Order has yet to be restored.