It seems like an excellent follow-on to my hopefully amusing  but somewhat depressing study yesterday of the end of money, to present you with this very amusing and possibly inspiring story of six Franciscan friars and a long dusty road.

I found the information on my Facebook page this morning, left as a gift from my Facebook friend Katie Dennis, a serious young woman with a sparkling sense of humour. The reference that Katie left me was from The Washington Post. Here’s an image that I filched from the gallery:

The article makes interesting reading. Here’s another from The Roanoke Times.  Check this little clip from the article:

So six friars were walking down the street on the day Harley-Davidson bikers were expected to flood downtown Roanoke. Each friar wore a brown habit and a white chord around the waist, and encountered exchanges like this one with a man wearing a denim jacket and waiting for the bike show:

Biker: “Well, what are y’all doing out here?”

Friar: “We’re walking to Washington, D.C.”

Biker: “You’re walking?!”

Succinct, to say the least. Aside from gaining a little practical experience at following the teachings of  St. Francis of Assisi, who founded the Franciscan orders and led the movement of evangelical poverty during the 13th century in Italy, there doesn’t see to be much point in the exercise, which is probably a very good reason for doing it. I say go for it.  Here’s another image ripped unmercifully from The Post:

The shot reminds me of something that often occurs to me as I trudge my weary way along the thoroughly hedonistic journey that is my life. Practically nothing makes you feel better than being genuinely useful.

Thanks, Katie, for inspiring me this morning. You’re a treat.

Today I did something that I have learned to loath. I checked our share balances. I wish that I hadn’t.

You know, if I were rich (uh-huh) and I lost half of it, sure, I’d be mildly upset. However, I’d still have a lot left over; probably enough, if I started out rich enough. But when you are most definitely not  rich and you lose half of it, you start thinking crazy thoughts.

As if that’s  not enough, we’re getting old. I don’t mean like ancient, just about mandatory retirement age. Well, we all know that someday, that  system is going to fall down and go boom. The world simply isn’t going to operate properly with a huge percentage of its population propping its feet up at 65 and saying, “Okay, I did my bit. Now keep me happy while I waste away doing nothing.” Nope, that duck’s not going to fly. Work until retirement is going to quickly change to work until death.

However, in the now  of it, since we are getting a little long in the tooth, the supporters that have proclaimed for decades what swell folk we are and what a great job we’re doing are getting decidedly tight-fisted. Financial support for our work is roughly a third  of what it was ten years ago. How many of you are getting by on a third of what you earned ten years ago. Comfy, are we? I think not.

Anyway, I’m not here to complain, but to tell you about the wild thinking that goes through one’s mind when contemplating the end of money. I’ll show you a guy who claims to live quite happily with no money at all.

You can decide if you believe it – the no money part, the happy part, or either (or maybe both).

Daniel Suelo lives in a cave near Moab, Utah in the great, wacky vastness of the American West. Here is a picture of Daniel in his cozy little cave:

Isn’t he cute? He looks like a little pack-rat all curled up in his midden. Daniel is an Anthropologist, which explains a lot. I picked up some very strange notions while studying Anthropology at UNI. Some of this mental mushiness has stayed with me to this day. Fortunately, I never discovered a way to make a living at it, a characteristic that Daniel and I seem to share.

Daniel keeps a blog of sorts here. It’s full of . . . uh . . . I don’t know what it is, precisely. There is religious symbolism and discussion – witness the Eight-fold Path dogma from Buddhism, familiar to me from my brief, enlightening and consciousness expanding foray into Zen (yes, there is  a correct answer to the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”:

And, not wanting to short-change a potential world-view, he gives equal time to Jesus delivering a thorough thrashing to the money changers:

The blog makes for amusing, if mystifying reading. Oddly, it’s not entirely clear to me exactly how he manages to live without money. Though there anecdotes aplenty, there is little practical information to help me through the transition from lightly-moneyed to moneyless. This is sad, because I’m going to be sorely in need of practical advice for the poverty-stricken sooner than later.

I was particularly intrigued by the story of the lady who walked up to the filthy stranger (Daniel’s words, not mine) and said that she wanted to share her breakfast with him. Poor Daniel was a bit put off when she handed him four bucks. He seemed to be hoping for something a bit more, uh . . . humane. However, she walked away and he was left scratching his head because he does not receive  money. (I’m going to send him my address forthwith. As soon as I figure out how to get mail delivered to his cave.) So, Daniel left the four bucks on the park bench and strolled off. This is not helpful advice.

Daniel’s blog is accompanied by his web site entitled Living Without Money.

The site is full of very true and seemingly pertinent information, such as:

Money is not a material substance.

Money is a belief in the head.

Money is a shared belief of two or more people. A German mark is nothing but a piece of paper with pretty pictures on it to a Yanomamo in the Amazon jungle. The Yanomamo sees it with the eyes of reality. Both the buyer and the seller must believe in money.

Money is credit.

Credit is belief.

Again, not very helpful to me. It’s like a doctor who explains to you in great detail precisely why you are dying. It may be enlightening, but it’s not particularly useful.

I found the FAQ section of the site slightly more informative and full of potentially helpful information. However,  nursing on a fifteen year old single malt Scotch while contemplating dumpster-diving and wolfing down road kill is not an exercise that I recommend.

Please, I’m begging here, if anybody wades through all of this and comes up with a workable plan for living without money that doesn’t involve deprivation on this scale, please send me your wisdom. Address it to:

MadDog
#1 Cave on Nob Nob Mountain
Madang
Papua New Guinea

UPDATE: When I got home last evening, I was horrified when the thought occurred to me that I may have slandered some very faithful people. We do  have several financial supporters who have hung with us for nearly three decades and show no signs of bailing. Those who have left the ship have had their reasons. Those who are hanging onto the railings and singing hymns as she sinks deserve to be noted for their trust and tenacity, not to mention their continued personal sacrifice in troubled financial times. I say, “God bless ‘em.” They are keeping us on the job.

I’ve got all kinds of problems of my own in my IT shop today, but I’m taking the time to notify my readers that one of our newspapers that runs an online version has a virus on the web site.

The National,  one of our two major newspapers has an infection of the HTML/Framer virus which is reported by AVG as such.

Here is the warning page that Firefox throws up:

And here is the AVG Threat warning window:

Okay, why am I doing this?

Yesterday, Eunie said that the newspaper site was infected. This morning I checked it out. I looked up the HTML/Framer virus and came away scratching my head. It is a strange one, for certain. I’m still not sure exactly what it can do to your computer. So, since I know that there are a lot of my readers who may have dubious virus protection, I’m putting up this notice to let you know that, unless you have bullet-proof anti virus protection, it would be unwise to visit The National’s  online version until you can be certain that the infection has been treated.

If you KNOW that your anti virus is working and up-to-date, then you can try the site. You will get some kind of warning if it is still infected. If you are not CERTAIN that your anti virus is A-OKAY, then I’d advise not visiting the site until the problem is fixed. You might not get any warning at all if the site is still infected. Also, I can’t tell you what it might do to your computer. The references that I looked at this morning were not very helpful in that area and I don’t have a lot of time to devote to the issue.

As soon as I was certain of my information, I called The National  and tried to speak to the webmaster. He wasn’t in yet. I left a message for him to call me, but it is nearly 11:00 and I haven’t heard from him. Therefore, I’m putting up the notice. I’ll make an update to this post as soon as I’m sure that the infection has been cleared up.

NOTE PLEASE: For users who are not sure what’s going on here, nothing that you see in this post means that your computer is infected by this virus or that my site is infected. The images that you see are just screen captures from my attempt to visit The National’s  web site. You have nothing to fear from having read this post.

UPDATE: Here is a portion of an email that I received from Kyle Harris this morning. Obviously, this exploit is a nasty piece of work:

Just saw your web post on the National Newspaper site.  Sounds a lot like the bug that hammered my site last week.  Look up TSPY_KATES.G via Google. Basically it puts a java script in the index.php file in your startup menu that attempts to load the virus onto any machine that visits that site. Then it adds the iframe code to each and every file on the site with the name “index” or “home”, rendering those files useless.

I had AVG on my machine but when I tried to visit my site, it downloaded the virus onto my machine anyway.  Don’t know what was happening with AVG.  Took almost a day to clean out my computer.

The web site is still off line until I can figure out how to repair all those compromised files.  It hammered both my blogs and my main site (cms). Make sure that your Wordpress site is upgraded and that you have everything backed up.

I have no idea how it got onto my site.  I have a highly secure password for that the site and had not been on for a couple weeks.  I am wondering if
since I am a shared hosting user if it got in via someone else’s site.

Thanks, Kyle, for the information. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I’m hoping that, since AVG spotted the exploit on my machine from The National  web site, that I’ll have a bit of protection. I’m also going to contact Hostmonster.com to see if they are doing anything to keep an eye out for their clients.

It’s a rainy, cold day here in Madang. The temperature is down to nearly 24°C (75°F for the Metric impaired). We’re all freezing.

Since I got to work early this morning, I’ll take a few minutes to have some fun. Saturday we went up to Blueblood on Mike Cassell’s Big Blue.  It was cloudy all day and in the afternoon the sea came up a little bumpy. Here’s a shot of the wake:

Mike put me behind the wheel on the way up. Sometimes it’s nice to get a chance to just ride in your own boat and not have to worry about driving it. I was enjoying the power steering and my new Space Cowboys sunglasses:

If you’ve seen the movie Space Cowboys, you’ll probably remember the character played by Donald Sutherland, Captain Jerry O’Neill, USAF (Ret.). The former Astronaut, who now designs roller coasters, wears Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. An enthralled young female coordinator supplies him with a pair of very expensive Italian prescription sunglasses. Here’s the movie poster:

Hmmm, seems to be in French. Okay, it says something like, “They are the only hope of NASA.” Thank you, Babel Fish.

I immediately coveted those sunglasses, but had little hope of owning a pair as the company’s web site listed them at about US$850! Uh, that’s a little beyond my price range. Way beyond.

This year when we visited Illinios, we went to a WalMart store to get Eunie’s glasses repaired. I saw some nice looking frames on the rack and asked if they could fit them with varifocal lenses. Surprised that the answer was yes, I ventured to ask the price. Two hundred bucks! Okay, since I needed new sunglasses anyway (the old prescription died) I decided to spring for a pair.  I ordered brown polarised lenses because that’s what you need if you’re going out to sea.

So, since I never miss an opportunity to show you my wrinkled old mug, here are the WalMart knock-off Space Cowboys sunglasses in all their glory:

Thanks to Jennifer Miller for being my photographer. Now that I’ve brought Jenn to mind, I’ll show you a lovely shot of her taken by Rich Jones. Here Jenn is guest-driving Big Blue  in the late afternoon sun:

As boat drivers go, Jenn is much easier to look at than I.

I am entirely too lazy and ill informed to venture answers to a plethora of thorny questions. I put these things in the “too hard” basket, seemingly along with most of the rest of the population. Nevertheless, the questions remain. A big question that has been bothering me ever since RD Tuna came to town has come up again on several occasions. Specifically, it has come up again when Ramu Nico appeared as if by magic and more recently concerning the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone.

The question is:  who decided? To put it another way, do the people of Madang Province have any say concerning “development” or are others pulling all the strings?

Of course, we all understand that provincial boundaries (and national borders) are legacies of the colonial past. The boundaries of Madang Province, and indeed Papua New Guinea itself are purely arbitrary in terms of ethnicity, common interest and cultural heritage. Nevertheless, Madang Province does exist and its people have rights concerning the use of their resources and legitimate claims to benefits from those uses.

So, the question is:  when did the people of Madang vote for this:

Or RD Tuna, or Ramu Nico, for that matter. I have asked many people what they think of the PMIZ. Most do not even know what it is. Some suppose there might be a job there, but they also assume that any jobs will involve long hours with unreasonably low wages. This is probably because they associate the new PMIZ with other “developments” that have been extremely disappointing to them in terms of  job opportunities.

If I were a citizen,* I would be asking a lot of questions about these so-called developments. I am not saying that development, even the PMIZ, is bad. I’m just asking such questions as I believe are reasonable for the general population to ask. Who benefits in what way? Where do the profits go? Who accepts responsibility for the social costs? What are the environmental costs and who is responsible for compensation for those costs? What jobs will be available and to whom will they be offered? How much will those jobs pay? These are questions that every citizen has a right to ask.

Okay, I need to back off here and turn it over to a few of my sources. Here is a selection of material that I found enlightening. Just Google “pacific marine industrial zone” (with the quotes) if you want more.

The Little Green Palai – (protesters illegally dispersed, 40,ooo jobs?)
Sun-Star – (view from the Philippines – it’s all about the fish)
Independent Media Centre Australia – (who decides?)
Mining Monitor – (The Hon. Ken Fairweather calls it “a fishy deal”)
What’s a Marine “Park” Doing in Madang? – (Nancy Sullivan sheds a little light)
Little Mindanao – (Nancy again with a scary story)
Proposed PMIZ - Pete Celso’s Power Point presentation

An item of interest in Mr. Celso’s presentation under the heading of “Threats” is, “[a] High potential of sabotage from those that will be detrimentally affected by the MIP.”  Hey, wait a minute! Who are these people who will be “detrimentally affected” by the PMIZ? How many of them are there? How angry are they going to be?

So many questions . . .  Will we someday hear, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

No, I didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed today. I don’t feel any more or less grumpy than usual. Later today, I’m going to take a ride up the North Coast Road on my Harley, dodging potholes all the way. In fact, I feel downright cheery. Maybe it’s because of this:

That’s our lounge with the golden light of the morning sun pouring in. God made this country a very special place. Every day I feel blessed by the privilege of living here. The lampshade is a little crooked, but otherwise, it’s Paradise.

* I am a Permanent Resident, not a citizen, so I obviously need to be careful what I say. The Government wants me for fork over K10,000 to become a citizen. I would, if I could afford it. Strange, eh?  A country where you have to purchase citizenship. Merit and qualifications are apparently secondary considerations.

Blueblood in a lifeline, a refuge from the pitiless tortures of life in a tropical paradise. Where does one go to escape the relentless peace and tranquillity? How can one find the bizarre in haystack of banal beauty?

Blueblood. How about Baby Balancing: (look away if you’re squeamish)

First it was Cat Juggling, exposed to the world for the first time in Steve Martin’s epic The Jerk. Similar so-called “sports” have sprung up in seedy bars and sweaty tropical night-spots girdling the globe. Here is an expose from The Lost Filmstrips Of Father Carlos Las Vegas De Cordova. (YouTube user mseals)

Here is another baby being balanced:

Well, enough frivolity.

I have to do some actual work today to earn my pathetic pay.

Out next door neighbours have a Sulfur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galerita) named Wili  (Willie). He’s quite the charmer. Cockatoos are raucous, outrageous, in-your-face creatures. In the afternoons, after a hard day taming wild computers with a chair in one hand and a whip in the other, I love to sit in my favourite chair with a cold beer and a cheap cigar, pet my dog, Sheba, and listen to Wili  raving next door in his favourite tree:

Here’s another shot of Wili  in his “modesty” or “hiding” pose. When Cockatoos feel uncertain, the pull their cheek feathers up over their beaks and do not make a sound:

Cockatoos are neither always certain, nor always noisy. Hmmm . . .  Why does this make me think of Rush Limbaugh? Could it be because he is always  certain and always  noisy? I find this irritating. Apparently others do. I Googled “rush limbaugh” and “buffoon” and got 26,500 hits. Impressive. Lest this turn into an unsubstantiated personal attack on a famous public figure, I will make my usual feeble attempt at humour to soften the blows.

Years and years ago we had a Cockatoo named Sysgen. (Old timers in the computer game who used Digital Equipment’s iron will remember the command to initialise a system device.) Sysgen was simultaneously fascinated and enraged by newspapers (much like myself). All I had to do to whip him into a frenzy was put a newpaper on the floor and let him have at it. If I wanted a spectacular show, I could wad up a sheet and throw it at him. I can remember Eunie and I laughing until tears streamed down our cheeks.

Somehow, in the tangled circuitry of my mind, I connected Sysgen and my disdain for Rush Limbaugh. The result was this poster, which has hung on my wall for probably twenty years:

You can click to enlarge to read the captions if you like, or here they are:

Frame 1:  What’s this!  Rush Limbaugh is coming to town???

Frame 2:  Arrrrggggghhhhh !  I can’t STAND that guy!

Okay, I admit that I’m a leftie, so sue me. However, if you’re of a conservative bent I ask you quite frankly:  Aren’t you sometimes slightly embarrassed by dear old Rush?

SO, on to less controversial images. While I was taking the shots of Wili,  sweet Sheba was observing.

Honestly, have you ever seen a prettier mongrel?