Thanks For The Jackboots; I Needed Them…

Q. What happens if you’re living in Ottawa, Canada, and you’re thin, and your place is a mess, and you ask the Ottawa Police Service if you’re legally required to eat?

A. Well, I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but for me, it went something like this: first, a couple of officers showed up while I was still on the phone, leaving only when I made noises to the person on the other end of the line about how I was about to be abducted, and then, around a week later, a public health nurse (and her sidekick) who’d been visiting me arrived at my door, announcing the imminent arrival of what turned out to be a crowd of people including a psychiatrist and a plain-clothed police officer.

Said officer proceeded to ask me a lot of meaningless questions about The Case(s) of the Stolen Cats, before accepting my invitation to talk alone inside (and once there, taking the opportunity to advise me to get my remaining cats registered, and telling me he knew nothing at all about the registered cat I had also reported as stolen, and had not yet been assigned an officer), and then going back outside, and asking me to come out and point out the houses of the neighbours involved.

Well, that, as it turns out, was merely another of the lies he told me, being nothing more than a prelude to the announcement, in front of the crowd of assembled Nazis, er, do-gooders, that in the interests of protecting me (and others!) from myself (when I’d left my apartment in the last four weeks only to buy groceries), he would have to put handcuffs on me, and force me into the back of his car (which turned out to be an undercover police cruiser), and take me to the hospital for a seventy-two hour observation/incarceration period.

After which period of petty tyranny, I was released without the shirt that had been on my back when I was forced in (fortunately I’d been wearing a jacket and parka, since I was left with a long walk home in a snowfall)… the shirt I’d been working in for the last little while… too dirty to wash, apparently… *shrug*

And, as a result of my small absence, I return to find (in addition to no running water in my apartment, and my stolen cats no closer to being returned) worldwide bedlam. Good job, City of Ottawa… How’s that WinterNoBrainActivityLude workin’ out for ya?

D’oh! – Homo Simpiens

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers. – Kahlil Gibran

One Of Us, Or One Of Them?

One of the little people; my little people.

A Note To Your Teachers

A recent email to the schoolers behind a website which, in order to protect the innocents, shall not remain nameless…

Hi folks,

Look, I thought I’d take a chance and contact you privately instead of venting on Disqus (one of my many soapbox platforms), but I’ll tell you straight, if no one sees fit to honor me with a personal reply to my request (no professional not paid to do so has done so so far), then it will come to that, and not, I assure you, to your advantage.

You may or may not have heard of me, but even if you have, you can’t have been paying very close attention; your website contains just about every error I’ve been railing against for the last year or so. See, unlike you guys, I’ve spent the last twenty years or so living on an average of around $10,000/year (Cdn), in order to have the time available to study, from the top down, any branch of knowledge I felt would have any utility in resolving, with minimal pain for all, the many problems faced by human societies and individuals, a list of disciplines that included, but was not limited to: philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, law, history, politics, pedagogy, theology, architecture, computers, and nutrition. Try to understand: to me, hearing you people talk is very much like what I would expect to hear from one of your more alert teens, were they given an equal chance to expound; I’m guessing it’s been a while since anything any of you wrote was reviewed by a peer who wasn’t being paid – in status and/or comfort – to do the deed, as I am not…

As a small example, your webpage states:

About Us

The Early Education Initiative seeks to promote a high-quality and continuous system of early care and education for all children, birth to age 8. Much of our focus is on pre-K up through 3rd grade.

All children? Sure you don’t mean ‘all (legal) American children’? Yes, I’m well aware that that information is provided by context, but so what? That sentiment infects your website: NewAmerica.net. Too bad even the newest, shiniest America money could buy wouldn’t help the half of humanity living on less than $9,000 (US, PPP).

And so, entirely unaware, having never reexamined your first principles in decades, you foist your unsustainable, unhealthy, and unethical fossil-fueled lifestyles off on the very children you claim to care about. As an example, it seems that since adults like living in cities better than villages, it is, quite obviously, better for their children to be raised there, right? They are just little blank-slate adults, aren’t they? The world, according to your pronouncements, would obviously be a better place if all children were raised in the city and bussed out to the country to examine strange flora and fauna such as pumpkins, instead of being raised there and taught to produce any of their own food, right? That would require teachers willing to rot somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and – gasp – get their hands, and possibly even their clothes, *dirty* – perhaps even willing to be forced to – gulp – *sweat* (sorry, I’ll try not to mention it again without a shower handy). While, apparently, other children – Somalian children, for example – are well enough served by being left behind, dead, when their parent’s food or water supply becomes too low to keep them alive. Gonna bus them out to the pumpkin patch too? Or maybe just discuss whether they’re watching age-appropriate television or not?

Hope someone on your team will decide to work with me instead of against me; I don’t ask for impossibilities, but unless anyone being paid to improve things starts admitting that I know more than they and all their colleagues put together do – it’s no more than the plain truth, after all – there will be no saving of even your own children. You’re better than most of the people I end up reading, but, because of your duties, which are rather imperfectly imagined, you’re just as dangerous as your less-educated adversaries, because you’re no less out of touch with reality than they are… on your front page, for example, for every mention of (entirely impersonal) children, there seems to be an equal and opposite mention of (entirely personal) paychecks…

But, much in the same way an astronomer could fairly safely predict that the sun would appear to rise the next morning, I’m more than capable of predicting that none of you will reply with an honest statement of your salary, and why, precisely, you deserve it any more than, say, I would. I’m that good… not at all confused, in fact. Just sickened by what humanity has become while I wasn’t watching.

Joseph Furtenbacher

p.s. You can find most of the fruits of my labor on Facebook, WordPress, The Huffington Post, Disqus, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The National Post and The Ottawa Citizen; Google should snare most of the rest. Of course, I’ll understand if you don’t feel the slightest inclination to do any such thing after such an insulting letter – being the world’s best polymathic macroethicist, how could I fail to also be best qualified to understand the effects of my own handiwork? Happens, though, if I do anything else here, we’re doomed anyways…

p.s. As predicted…

Who Teaches The Pedagogue?

If children lead children, it shall all be fun and games, until somebody loses an eye…

Hello, World

Is there anybody out there who wants to help the rich more than become (or remain) one of them? Is anyone more interested in helping the poor than using them?

fs910@ncf.ca

Ah, the crickets… summer can’t be far away!

A Few New Platform Planks And A New Picture

 

Don't say I never compromise:)

 

Tracy Tong of Metro Ottawa had a few questions she wanted answered, a desire for a pic, and a rather peculiarly-phrased word limit of four sentences per topic…

Name: Joseph Furtenbacher

Age: 50

Occupation: The world’s best polymathic macroethicist (moral philosopher of all disciplines, academic of none), with a solid grounding in philosophy, psychology, economics, sociology, politics, history, law, pedagogy, theology, architecture, computers and nutrition, I’ve spent the last six months creating a social networking virus that has changed the focus of human dialogue from finger pointing to solution seeking. Due to my frustration at finding my concepts and style as widely copied as my name was deeply buried, I decided to help everyone involved by running for Mayor of Ottawa, both as a means of helping Ottawans (I assumed they felt they needed any help), and letting the rest of the world know the source of the innovations they’d been bandying about so casually. I also wanted to stop the cherrypicking that has allowed my most beneficial (but unpopular) policies to languish unremarked. At the moment, with my campaign in support of ‘The Man Who Should Be Mayor’, and my blog, http://josephfurtenbacher.wordpress.com, I’m engaged in trying to convince the people of Ottawa that they themselves are worth far more than their status, money and possessions combined.

On transit: As with most of the other monomathic theories I encounter, I find our present transit rationale contains holes big enough to drive a light rail train car through. Our municipal debt stands at around $800,000,000 ($200,000,000 of it added this year), yet we cheerfully contemplate adding hundreds of millions more for the whitest elephant I’ve seen since I started looking for them twenty years ago (it’s good, however, that Mr. Haydon is conscious of the need to recycle the fill that would result from digging a tunnel a hundred feet below street level through rock located adjacent to a fault line, though I don’t know that using it to dam the Ottawa river would be my first choice; and in addition, I can’t help but feel that the eventual ongoing costs of security, cleaning, and machine maintenance will hardly help our bottom line). My plan calls for the laying of double track along the 417-174 corridors from Kanata to Orleans, and along the O-Train-Via Rail corridors from Gatineau to Barrhaven, served by feeder busses via underpass accesses, with a street level (sunken) double-track free-to-use shuttle service from an O-Train line transfer (and fare payment) station, along the Slater-Transitway corridors (Slater will become a corridor by splitting the difference with north-south overpasses), to a similar station on the Queensway line. The rolling stock will be the lightest available that is able to reliably handle our admittedly whimsical winter wonderlands.

On taxes: Tax rationale is the largest part of the competence pillar of my platform (the other three being pragmatism, ethics and vision); it’s largely why I decided to run: I’m firmly convinced that practically everyone else in the world (a notable exception being Ezra Klein) has no idea what they’re talking about; as evidence I offer the crazy-quilt disjointedness that our present ‘systems’ exhibit. My rationales, based as they are on the far more realistic model of human nature provided by evolutionary psychology, provide simpler, more effective policies – I’m not whistling in the dark like most people are, so I can address specific issues in detail while maintaining coherence with the rest of the policies I advocate. For example, to address the status and comfort addiction many people in this city suffer from, I would introduce consumption taxes and subsidies through property tax shifting, so as to benefit businesses who produce sustainable, healthy, and prosocial goods and services, while encouraging those who feel differently towards their customers (or the rest of the world) to take a good look in the mirror. And I think it’s sort of hypocritical to complain about upper levels of government downloading costs when we pay large numbers of ‘public servants’ enough to push them into the top tax bracket; I agreed to work for the median (or representative) income of $40,000 not only so as to remain mindful of the problems faced by our less fortunate residents, but also in order to be able to apply pressure to others who may, perhaps, overvalue the benefits of their services to the many people in our region who continue to wait for such basic necessities as affordable housing or daycare. To anyone who argues that such wage levels would not lead to the employment of the right sort of people, I believe that even these few paragraphs offer an effective rebuttal.

On the environment: I believe that most people in this city are dangerously deluded concerning the degree of sustainability their actions entail; having lived with the crutch of fossil fuels for so long, we have come to consider it a necessity, and therefore a right. For my part, having biked year-round for the last twelve years, I’ve seen staggering numbers of overweight drivers alone in their vehicles speeding to and from jobs which could just as easily have been performed at home, but for the absence of a water cooler. My vision calls for rezoning office buildings and gas stations and raising their rates, as well as implementing progressive residential property taxes (with reductions for those who invest in the production of on-site food or affordable housing) in order to send a message to people who feel that their status is more important other people’s (or species’) health. I will also, assuming enough people care enough about the environment to actually vote for me, spur the creation of rooftop and small-park community gardens and the planting of food trees, and subsidize composting toilets, both to reduce the amount of sewage we dump into the Ottawa river, and to increase the fertility of our region over time.

What’s the one luxury you can’t live without? The belief that someday humans will care as much about themselves as I care about them.

What was the last book you read? Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham, a favourite of long standing.

Bedtime For BOMA

Joseph Furtenbacher unleashed the St. Bernards of xenophilia,

Hi,

My name is Joseph Furtenbacher, and I’m running for Mayor of Ottawa. I would be very much interested in hearing why you apparently have no problem with assigning my interest in serving this city to the realm of irrelevancy (while knowing nothing about me, having obviously never bothered to check the websites of any of the candidates, such as <http://josephfurtenbacher.wordpress.com> ). I would also like to know why you decided to go with those perennial crowd pleasers, the dancing dinosauric duffers, with their subevolutionary solicitations and paymentless programs, who lack even the knowledge contained in first year economics and psychology textbooks, in short, those battling beauties known as The Front-Runners.

Mold in public housing, and Larry O’Brien with a $1.8 million mansion sitting empty. Must be nice to have a place to get away from it all (it’s in Brockville) Apparently when you have a garage full of muscle cars, buying local (real estate) isn’t all that important.

Or Mr. Watson, who loved Ottawa so much he quit the top job and left town for the bright lights and high (elite?) society that could only be found in Toronto. Shall I go on? (I’ll take that as a yes.)

Has anyone in your organization ever considered why we have progressive income taxes but flat property taxes? Can anyone explain why this discrepancy exists? Can any of your members explain why the city whines about never receiving sufficient gas tax revenues, but refuses to rezone gas stations and raise their rates? Why, while we have an $800-million debt ($200-million of it added this year) we’re talking about digging a top-of-the-line tunnel that will solve exactly nothing for most of the city? (Contrary to popular belief, not all Ottawans are office workers.) I would encourage telecommuting by rezoning and raising the rates of buildings where people produce nothing but papers or electron flows, and I would encourage on-site fruit and vegetable and affordable housing production by lowering or eliminating property taxes on owners who pursued these options. I would also raise the rates on luxury homes, and if more people decided to emigrate than immigrate, it would merely mean that all that much more affordable housing could be created, and I’m sure there are many people who would be more than happy to perform those jobs in return for a more modest salary and home, realizing that they’d been allowed to live in one of the best cities in the world.

Sorry to take up so much of your time, but you really need to give your head a shake.

Yours,

Joe

Joseph Furtenbacher
Mayoral Candidate, Ottawa 2010

Dean Karakasis, Executive Director of BOMA Ottawa, opined,

Another opine.

From: “Joseph Furtenbacher” <fs910@ncf.ca>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 03:56:57 -0400
To: <executivedirector@bomaottawa.org>
Cc: Xanthippa Socrates<xanthippas.chamberpot@gmail.com>; sylvain<sylvain.henry@gmail.com>; Sandy Bryden<indyjones@sympatico.ca>; Robin Lawrance<Robinlawrance18@yahoo.com>; Randall Denley<rdenley@ottawacitizen.com>; OTAG<admin@ottawataxpayer.com>; Glen Gower<ggower@ottawastart.com>; Cockburn, Neco \(ott\)<NCockburn@thecitizen.canwest.com>; allyy caaarella.<ally.carella@hotmail.com>
Subject: Democracy

Hi,

My name is Joseph Furtenbacher, and I’m running for Mayor of Ottawa…

However, having evidently thought the matter over (or perhaps having had a good night’s sleep), he decided that appeasement was the better part of prudence, and fired off an ‘explanation’,

Dear Mr. Furtenbacher,

Thank you for letting us know your position on the issues below.

Just to be clear our debate is not an open public forum, but a BOMA Member forum, and the choice of candidates to invite was made by our membership (our voting members) through committee not by our office.

While I appreciate your desire to participate, and would endorse public forum debates include all candidates, ours is a 2 hour Members’ Forum not a public forum, and the specific issues to be addressed and the choice of the candidates was our members choice given the restrictions of time available.

Although I can appreciate you disagree with their choice, I am bound to follow their direction.

By policy, I will share your disappointment with our Board of Directors, by forwarding your e-mail to them at our next Board Meeting and so they are aware of your comments.

Sincerely,

Dean Karakasis
Executive Director
BOMA Ottawa

Never one to sufflate fools gladly (his needling usually had the opposite effect), Joseph stood up,

Hi Dean,

Good to know you’re only *representing* people who are more interested in being entertained than in preserving the system of governance that others died to protect. I’m also impressed by the way they’re able to sacrifice a full two hours out of their television viewing schedules once every few years. It makes me feel that we almost have a hope in hell of avoiding the fun times the rest of the world is currently going through.

But how is it that though your job description contains the word ‘Director’, you are ‘bound to follow their direction’? Surely you’re not one of those modern ‘leaders’ who leads by asking their followers which way they want to go? It’s good, though, that you are resolved to follow policy in re sharing my disappointment with your Board of Directors; I’m sure they will be equally impressed by the values I hold dear.

Hope the annointed ones provide lots of promises (and maybe even a few ideas on how to actually pay for them) in return for their dinner. Such dedicated citizens certainly deserve something more than business as usual. I, myself, can’t help but feel that the $2.x billion being tossed around would be better utilized in reducing the affordable housing backlog by more than 2% per year. But perhaps when the Downtown TunnelVision is finally up and running, they’ll allow homeless people to stay there as was done in Britain during WWII.

I hope I haven’t insulted you too badly. I generally don’t have any problem with people who believe they know more than me, but no one likes being talked down to by children.

Prophetically yours (I recently came across a document I wrote fifteen years ago that describes our present situation to a ‘T’),

Joe

Joseph Furtenbacher
‘Mayoral Candidate’, Ottawa 2010

p.s. I must admit, you’ve got me shaking my head, and not in a good way.

. . .

Dean Karakasis acknowledged his inability to change anything,

Dear Mr. Furtenbacher,

Thank you for letting us know your position on the issues below…
etc.

This was followed by a Summit,

Dean Karakasis sued for peace with a hand-picked selection of his finest words…

I respect your position, best of luck in the election.

Joseph Furtenbacher couldn’t help but notice that his parsnips remained unbuttered, and was about to say so, when he noticed that the Sun was setting – it was almost too dark to read. He glanced to the far right, and became aware of a dim light struggling to make its presence known – The Ottawa Star Chamber Of Commerce. His face assumed its best ‘Perry Mason, Fighter’ expression – as a proud Citizen, he knew he had a duty to battle xenoapathetic destruction wherever it raised its gilded head.

Giving a wave to Dean, he turned towards the Valley, and started trampling down the Right side of the Hill.