The Washing of brains.

When I’m invited by people I straight away try to find a fairly upright chair near a table because I can’t stand sofas or armchairs in which you sink into fluffiness and to get out of those damn things is just as bad as to pick up your glass from that bloody low coffee table in front of you. Folding yourself double is not my idea to appreciate a drink but where ever you go, the lay out is the same, people believe that’s how a properly furnished house should be equipped for the last ±60 years. Before that people used to receive their guests around a normal table equipped with dining room chairs and as long as those chairs were correctly designed, nothing was more comfortable. I don’t know who introduced low sofas, vast armchairs and coffee tables, it turned out to be a most unfortunate invention that has taken in every person worldwide that has enough money to furnish a house. Certainly one of the most successful brainwashing stunts ever accomplished. Before 1920 that low kind of furniture did not exist and antique dealers could not supply antique low tables because they had never been made. So the dealers made them up, a bit of bullshit never scared an antique dealer. I know, I was one for a number of years.

Still one better example of brainwashing publicity is of course coca cola, invented when the drug laws were almost non-existent. Using the coca leaf, wherewith the Central American Indians had managed to make their miserable life bearable for thousands of years because its slightly inebriating and addicting qualities and then, by adding lots of sugar and colour the company made a drink that was as addictive as alcohol but legally remained a soft drink. I would not be surprised if coca cola has killed more people by causing obesity than the tobacco companies with their fags. No one really knows how much money the coca cola company has generated during its existence, Warren Buffett who is considered the world’s greatest investor made billions when he bought a large parcel of coca cola shares in the 1970’s. Billions of dollars….millions of deaths?

Talking about shares, recently I spotted an opportunity to make some cash on the stock exchange and therefore I had to watch the market daily. You would think that an institution that moves trillions of boodle every day would function more or less scientifically, you know ,study the company’s performance before buying their shares, that sort of thing. Nothing is further from the truth. These millions of investors make me think of tiny scary-wary birds that panic at the slightest noise or flash of light. Share prices of good companies can tumble without any reason because the only entity that drives these markets is ‘Fear’.

The fear of losing out on a money making opportunity is as great as the fear of losing money and these fears are not borne of any rational thinking, often they are caused by politicians’ idiotic statements, of which there are plenty as these fellows can’t help themselves from spouting claptrap. Any bit of rumour is good for a jump up or down in share price and therefore you will never see a stock market graph as a smooth line, zigzag is the norm. Nationalities play no role, a chinaman can be just as brainwashed by fear as a dutchman. I’m no exception, for my modest means I made a fair whack in a few months but then things slowed down and, fearful that I might lose what I had made, closed the opportunity, rightly or wrongly. I will know in time as, today, no one knows.

Governments are of course, dab hands at brainwashing called political education. For the last hundred years governments have grown in size, idiocy and robbery. All that with the assistance of their brainwashed populations who now pay extortionate taxes, without strife, to their bloody governments. The US has become the most thievish state in the world, the military and the politicians are in total control of a badly functioning kind of social security government where a quarter of the population can only stay alive with food stamps paid for by the half of the population that can still pay exorbitant taxes. More and more hard working people with some money are leaving the country and give up their passports in order not to be pursued anymore by their notorious IRS. The american dream has become a nightmare.

I could go on but I’ll stop with a wee bit of south african wine brain washing. The Southafs make some lovely white wines but believe that to make a good red wine, french oak is needed in the form of expensive imported barrels. For more than a thousand years an oaken barrel was the best wine recipient after amphorae, other woods than oak could not be used because they tainted the taste of wine. In Europe even oak was considered disagreeable because new barrels conferred a lot of tannin to new wines. However, after a few years the tannin content became exhausted and these older barrels were much prized by the wine makers. When I bought wine in France by the barrel fifty years ago some of my friends were using barrels that they thought were a hundred years old and when they had to buy a new barrel they ‘weathered’ it with a lesser wine. In South Africa for the last 30 years the cry has been for New French Oak to make any red wine. The wine drinkers have been brain washed that in order to appreciate a red wine your cheeks must be sucked in through your molars by this bitter new oak tannin. Barrels more than 2-3 years old are discarded by many winemakers as they’ve ‘lost’ their precious bloody tannin. Drive by some of the winemaker’s properties. As publicity for their business they pile up heaps of perfect wooden barrels in some field next to the road. Of course, one year’s sun and rain kills those barrels that have cost about ten thousand rands each.

I know one chap who has the biggest barrel-making factory in France. He is a very clever fellow and I wonder whether he brainwashed our Southaf winemakers.