Wednesday, March 08, 2006
I made another drawing.
Whereas writing seems to elevate my stress levels, I find drawing to be almost therapeutic. Not to mention that I submitted the eagle drawing for publication, and I have actually received genuine responses (albeit rejections) from editors at The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Washington Post to name a few. That one single drawing seemed to generate more interest than all of my previous essays.
The new design is a flag with stars (a DataMatrix two-dimensional barcode) and stripes (a Code 128 linear barcode) that were created from actual barcode technology.
I encoded the cyberslang term “OWN3D” (read “OWNED”) into these barcodes, because this expression describes how I feel about this so-called ownership society.
If there's one thing that I learned as a futures trader, it's that there's profit to be made from confusion, disorder, misinformation, uncertainty, instability, and conflict.
We have all of these problems in this country (like healthcare, energy prices, and the war), but politicians seem incapable of coming up with any practical ideas or reasonable solutions. These politicians bounce from one issue and one debate to another, and the outcome is almost always the same: they agree to disagree. Meanwhile, the people continue to struggle while the corporations profit from it all.
This is not the Incorporated States of America--it's the United States of America!
This is not a corporation--it's a country! This is not of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation--it's of the people, by the people, for the people!
After all, the investment we need to protect is not the one printed upon the paper of stocks and bonds, but the one engraved upon the hearts and minds of a generation.
