If people are governed by laws, they will avoid punishment, yet have no sense of shame.

Socialism, like caffiene, is all good intentions which fail to translate into actual solutions.
Even to simple problems such as what is for dinner Sure, it'll make people jittery and
paranoid, but in the end is best viewed with the kind of reflection reserved for test rockets
which blow up on their launching pads. Mind you I'm sure the remaining stable socialist
nations are hard at work on a kind of socialism 2.0, which might only make its inevitable
autocrats want to mass-murder dissenters a little, if at all.

Sometimes, late at night when the moon is wasxing, I ponder to myself why I bother to think about such things, and whether I need to put myself back into therapy. Perhaps its because going to Darling harbour lately resembles not so much a harbour than a parking lot with seagulls. The water is so disgustingly putrid who knows if the council should plough it for next spring or just pave it over.

There are an interesting class of hoboes in Sydney, and most of them have taken up the mantle
of the "hobo-sign", which I mistakenly thought was a passe thing for hoboes to have (I'm also
calling them hoboes instead of homeless, mostly because of Americanisation). These signs are
pretty amusing for the most part but every time I try to stop and read one my brain filters
reality into the words into "Please help I have no sense of self." There are the people who
ask for spare change, as if anyone has such a thing.

Some people sell a magazine called "The Big Issue" which by now has become something of a symbol of the corporate yoking of the helpless and unfortunate. I'm not sure what issue it refers to of large size but the magazine doesn't offer much by way of solutions to the homelessness problem, except the aforementioned socialism. There are some articles about biscuits as they pertain to age and aging gracefully, and some about being disaffected by politics, religion, or children in the particular issue (big) I read about.

I also read in this publication that one of the vendors began living on the streets (again)
because they "preferred the open spaces." So I wandered around the city for half an hour
afterwards, looking for open spaces. I found Hyde park, and still did not find anything
worthy of being called open space. I found concrete jungle, urban decay, and some spontaneous regeneration of beauty in the form of halfway decent graffiti. Perhaps they neglected to mention the open spaces of the mind after indulging too much in certain sensual pleasures.

Forget the "spare change", how about some of these 'shrooms, Captain Wacky?

When I come to power (a listing of future decrees).

Running for trains will be banned, on pain of being completely legally tripped down flights of stairs at stations.

All internet timeouts will be abolished, with no regard for whether this is a good thing.

All tyres will henceforth be "white-walled"; just because it will make the majority of modern cars look freaking ridiculous.

Bureaucrats working in any sort of office with fluorescent lighting will be obliged to describe their duties as "light surfing of the internet, coupled with heavy pornographing and the occasional meeting."

Mountain-climbing will be banned from the news unless base-jumping is involved, that way we'll have to hear less about the uncountable perils of climbing DOWN a mountain which nobody except mountaineers care much about.

Hats with those little umbrellas attached will be mandatory for all surfing performed on crowded public beaches (that way aggressive surfers, not wanting to look like idiots, will have to fuck off to secluded locations to surf like they are meant to).

Media magnates like Rupert Murdoch will be made to publicly apologise (perhaps posthumously) for having lived so long without making any apologies for being such control freaks.

Dictators like Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il will be praised by delegates for the developed world in the United Nations general assembly for being "just so awe-inspiring" while their countries are simultaneously air-dropped with care packages of fine chocolates, baseball caps,
carbon-filtration water receptacles, and those sneakers with little lights in the heels.

Bill Bailey will not only win the Eurovision song contest every single year he is alive, he will be appointed emperor of England's west country.

The price of sweet, delicious, light crude oil will be fixed at $1 per barrel, or else uncle Sam's fleets of fighter-bombers will be given leave to go berserk on all refining-oriented governments (this will be hard to recognise for the current status quo).

Global warming will be considered, pondered, agreed upon in principle, then completely ignored. Business as usual, really.

People reviewing Hollywood disaster films in a negative light will be made to go stand in a hurricane to truly appreciate the majesty of nature.

Anyone who refers to television as "the opiate of the masses" will have theirs confiscated and replaced with a replica containing actual opiates.

All future Malthusian catastrophes will be hailed as inevitable, and, heaven forfend, maybe planned for just a little. You know, for fun.