You’re gonna need a pick-me-up track from the Juiced Box this time out. And for a genuine legendary pick-me-up, you can’t go past Bob Marley.

I know, I know, it’s been a while since I had anything to say here at The Bar None. Pull up a stool and I’ll ignore your whining. Normally, my kind words of comfort and sympathy to the lesser individuals amongst us wash against your tired, drunken brain like vomit swirling around the bottom of the toilet. I’ve left you all alone for a while now, safe in the warm, molesting hands of our favorite barkeep, young Al. But I’ve held my tongue too long, far too long against the oncoming tide since I last put finger to keyboard and delivered a rant like no other to those I see as betrayers of the human condition. Something’s been pissing me off for a long time now, something brewing bigger than a vat of German ale at Oktoberfest. Forgive me if this gets a little…. political… or “real”, but for fucks sake, don’t you just want to scream?

It’s pretty fuckin’ obvious that the world is damn near screwed. Not just one-night-stand screwed, I mean bang a bus full of football hooligans for a buck kinda screwed. Royally reamed, bent over and inserted with something sharp, solid, and cold. Yeah, you say, this is gonna be about that Kardashian slag, right? About how her IMDB bio got fucked with by some smartass with more balls than a bus full of women screwing a football hooligan. Wait, that’s not right. It’s wrong. That’s not what I’m on about here.

Apparently, money’s main weakness is lightning…

I want to talk to you about finance. Money. And how we’re all royally screwed. A rant about corporate greed, corruption and how that stupid Zuckerberg has the scrotum to put an internet company up for public float and make all his employees multimillionaires. I just want you to know, Zuckerberg, if I ever bump in to you on a dark night in a park somewhere, when the street lamps have blown and all you have for company is a wino sleeping on a bench covered with the sports section, I’m gonna fuck you up say some stuff that’ll probably make you cry. So you have a net worth higher than the GDP of India if the GDP of India was like a gazillion rupee, does that mean I have to swallow your damn arrogant smile as you make even more from conning the public?

We typed “Mark Zuckerberg” into Google and this is the only picture that came up.

Before I get off topic and into a Zuckerberg rant, let’s just say I’m a little pissed at how badly our world economy is traveling. And if this isn’t enough to make people take up boozin’ to get past it, then nothing will. Let’s look at some facts, okay? – I know, they’re a rarity round these parts, but let’s fucking look anyway. Europe, to clarify my earlier statement, is – for want of a better word – screwed. The bottom’s fallen out of the market in the majority of the major Euro players – Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece are all abso-lutely rooted. And by rooted, I mean that not in a supportive context, but the kind of context you’d find in a bestiality porno. Greece especially looks like dragging the world down into some kind of mega-depression, from what the news reports say. Now, I normally drink through the opening twenty minutes of our local news service, so I can spend more time finding the sporting highlight hilarious, but of late I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in those opening twenty minutes of whatever they normally gab on about. Greece, and a whole bunch of other Euro Zone countries (what, is that like the opposite of the End Zone or something?) look like they’re struggling to repay some kind of debt, and now they’re having to introduce something called “austerity measures” to keep the budget in check…. in other words, the Big End Of Town got a little loose with the cash, so now the Little People are gonna have to eat bread and chips for a generation to pay for it. Or something like that. So you have a bunch of Greek politicians being voted in… voted out… voted back in…. resigning…. being voted back in again… like a roundabout of folks who want to be in charge but don’t want to fix anything. Sounds like me on a Sunday afternoon when the wife tells me to get out and mow the lawn…. chuckle….

You wouldn’t like him when he’s hungry.

Then there’s America. Big frickin’ America, so proud of itself it can’t see where it’s stuck its own head right up its ass and is eating its own poo. Apparently, and I’m not just making this up, America owes like half of its firstborn children to the Chinese. Kid you not. Most of America is damn near owned entirely by China – a country who about thirty years ago couldn’t even keep people out of a square somewhere without needing to bring in the tanks. (Too soon?) America’s been fighting two wars at the same time (which, I admit, was pretty cool at the start but now looks stupid) and they’ve spent more on their military budget than they can afford – which brings us to their stupid “debt ceiling”. You mean, there’s a limit to debt? Holy Christ in a handbasket, does that mean we’ll see some fiscal responsibility from the Yanks in order to keep their budget and house in order? No siree, just fire up the good old Constitution and vote to increase the level of debt America can handle, and that’ll solve a world of problems, right? Instead, didn’t somebody ask the question: “if it doesn’t matter how much debt we have, why do we even have a debt ceiling?”. Good fucking question, man.

Tossing about new taglines for currency, we came up with this little effort.

Imagine if I walked into the Bar None and decided I’d rack up a tab which was more than I earned in a week. I couldn’t pay that tab, but I came back a week later and did the same thing again, increasing my debt to Al but still being unable to pay him back completely. And I do this same thing week in, week out. I’m pretty sure Al would back me up when I say that that’s a shitty way to do business, but if you wanna tie everything up in a pretty bow so the uneducated can understand it, that’s pretty close to what the US has been doing. Apparently, it doesn’t matter how much they owe to anybody, because they can simply print more money or something and make their problems go away with a war. It’s enough to make a poor guy drink, isn’t it?

Because whining about something will always get you what you want.

China and the rest of Asia (aside from Japan, who are currently the Switzerland of Asian finance on account of a fricking nuclear problem and some kinda earthquake) have strong economies, so strong in fact that the rest of the world is, very soon, going to have to rely on them completely for financial strength. Down here in Australia, about the only industry we have outside of Russell Crowe is our mining industry, chugging away selling our valuable minerals to a bunch of people who still censor the internet. Fuck you Google, they say, and Google says okay I’ll go get fucked. Stupid Google. The mining industry to China is worth billions upon billions to our national economy, much the same way call centers are worth the same to the Indian economy. So if China was to suddenly pull the plug on mining in Australia, this little Hot Rod might be typing his next post via the ankle of a carrier pigeon. The Western World has got itself into a pretty shaky position, it would seem, and yet young people are still going out drinking instead of learning Mandarin, which we should all know when the new world order begins in a few years.

The scariest graph you’ll ever see…

I jest, but seriously, has anybody in charge actually sat back and wondered if we shouldn’t just let it all go to shit? Let the Greeks stick with a financial system which is obviously working out so well for them? Let the Euro Zone collapse and plunge the world into a financial collapse so massive it’d make the Great Depression look like a smoko break out the back of work? Right now, there’s a bunch of banking tossers running between their multi-million dollar corporate offices wondering how in the hell they’ll keep their hedge funds and investment deals that allow them the pleasure of swanning about the Mediterranean on the triple-level yacht their wife wanted, smoking cigars and banging a bunch of low-level Euro-trash hookers. I hope they choke on their heroin caviar, because it’s those wankers who’ve got us all into this mess. Yeah, I could blame my need for a 50″ plasma or a six bedroom house when I only need one with three, and how my capitalist lifestyle has simply added fuel to the fire of the impending Western Collapse, but like any good capitalist, I’m gonna try and avoid blame by making it someone else’s problem.

I know where all HER debt is hiding….

So why not let it all go – let the world economy reset to zero like we all thought it would on Y2K? No doubt it’s because the missing-tooth brigade in America’s deep south might say it’s all Osama Bin Laden’s fault (because even in death, that fucker’s still screwing with us all), and then there’d be some holy war between the Westboro Baptist Church and the Islamic Religion like we all hope will happen (seriously, I’d pay to see that) ending in some kind of apocalypse. If we all did revert back to the stone age of economic ruin, though, I guarantee there’s one thing that would make it easier to bear.

We’ll find any reason to put a pic of Kim Kardashian sucking something up here at the Bar None.

Booze. If we all do end up circling the drain of banking misconduct, thanks to the sackless wonders currently running the financial markets, I wanna make sure it’s on public record that I’m gonna be stashing a whole bunch of booze out the back of my house. I suggest you do the same. It’s gonna make fantasizing about that stupid Kardashian cow a whole lot easier when the world ends.