No Thanks Donald Trump, Keep Your Snake Oil

Over the years I’ve worked with a hell of a lot of sales people.

I don’t want one of your f*****g steaks, either

Some good, some psychotic, which of course you could say for any “profession”, but a psychotic salesperson is something to behold, and not in a good way.

Sales people are a certain breed.

President-elect Donald Trump… I can’t believe I just wrote that… this is a very f****d up Twilight Zone / Black Mirror episode… but I digress. Donald J. Trump is a sales person. The ultimate.
Reported guestimates of his bank balance range between $150, $3 billion or $10 billion, give or take.

With Trump, it’s all about closing the deal, he wrote THAT book which thankfully I have avoided. Trump closed the deal early Wednesday morning – the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC.

So where to now? During the campaign Trump made a litany of very well documented promises to his faithful (we all saw them as outrageous threats), but will he follow through? Or in true snake oil salesman mode, was all that ranting simply BS, means to an end of winning the Presidency?
Who knows? With Trump, you get the impression that he is constantly making it up as he goes along, to borrow that line from Monty Python. We’re all in very murky unchartered waters,
heading straight for the Bermuda Triangle.
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No doubt many of his hard core supporters would have been simultaneously disappointed and disillusioned with his victory speech. It was extremely un-Trumplike, none of the vitriol, no locking up of “Crooked Hillary”, no wall-building threats, no pussies were grabbed, nobody was threatened with deportation. I laughed when it was reported as “being Presidential”, I put it down to the fact he’s an old man and it was waaaay past his bedtime.

Is Trump serious about making America great again? What does that very shallow four-word slogan even mean? Define “great”. Trump was following the old adage of tell ‘em what they want to hear and closed the deal.

Let’s pick one of his campaign “policies”. Did he / does he have any intention of building that wall? Again, who knows how any of this will play out. He’ll no doubt wheel out that hoary old chestnut (which is itself a hoary old chestnut),“Well you know I wanted to <insert bizarre promise> I really did. I promised you I would. But I was blocked. They’re weak. Cowards… etc etc”. The faithful will chug down some more Kool-Aid.

Trump’s meeting with President Obama in the White House on Thursday was surreal to say the least. Trump used the words “great respect” which is laughable, considering the whole birther thing, and the blowtorch he continually took to Obama during the election campaign. But did he really mean any of that? Neither of them looked like they wanted to be there. The body language experts had a field day.

So I suppose it is a matter of watching this space, to see what President steak salesman and beauty pageant owner does. I find it highly amusing / terrifying that his campaign team barred him from Twitter during the final days of the campaign, and now he has the nuclear codes. You seriously couldn’t make this stuff up.

Millions across the planet are proclaiming that the Trump presidency will be the end of the world… and to quote the classic R.E.M. song, Trump will respond with “and I feel fine.”

©Steve Williams 2016

*This piece also appeared in The Huffington Post Australia:
No Thanks, Donald Trump, Keep Your Snake Oil

An open letter to cigarette smokers

Dear smokers. I know you and I don’t get along that well.

This bloke has the right idea (image: www.ecouterre.com)

I’d like to ask you some genuine questions, from someone who has never had a cigarette.

1. Why do you throw your cigarette butts on the ground? (#notallsmokers)

I know you very thoughtfully then stamp on it, grind it into the footpath / road / grass / beach
in case a random passerby treads on it and bursts into flames, thanks for that. But, pun intended, why don’t you pick it up?

Congratulations. You are adding to the several trillion cigarette butts discarded each year.

If I threw my empty bottle of whatever on the ground, trod on it and walked off, would you think that was odd? If yes, then what’s the difference?

But what am I supposed to do with it? 

Good question. That is your problem. You’re the one who is smoking. Find an ashtray, a garbage bin or preferably put it in your pocket. However, throwing it on the street / beach / pot plant / garden / drain or wherever, like everything else with your smoking – including the disgusting smell, risk of cancer etc – becomes my problem.

The street is the worst option. Street = drain = harbour or beach or river, causing untold damage to marine life for the simple fact butts are obviously not biodegradable. Surprisingly, they don’t magically evaporate in water, in fact all that lovely cadmium, lead and arsenic leaches into our environment within an hour of contact with water. They also don’t evaporate in air, evidenced by bushfires started by some moron lobbing a butt out of a car window.

2. What do you think happens to that cigarette butt you have just thrown on the ground?

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More likely a bloke with a bastard leafblower blows it down the drain and then see above.

3. What do you do at home? Is your floor / backyard / balcony a Great Pyramid of Butts?
Hopefully you dispose of cigarette butts properly, well, as properly as one can…
so why don’t you do that when you are out?

I know, I know… you non-smokers don’t get it, it’s an addiction, smoking is not illegal,
the government makes a fortune out of us smokers… 
blah, blah, blah.

Again. I don’t care. You have no rights as a smoker. Perversely, actually you do.
You can sit outside a nice restaurant “enjoying” your cigarette, the view and the “fresh air”,
while I have to endure your recycled smoke and that stench. Why should I be forced inside?
I know Australian state governments have acted on this to their credit, but this doesn’t go
far enough. I’m talking to you, Europe.

If smoking just stayed your problem, I’d be happy. Butt it doesn’t. So I’m not.

©Steve Williams 2016

*This piece also appeared in The Huffington Post Australia:
I Wish Smoking Was Just Your Problem. Butt It’s Not

A defence of “Anti-vaxxers” backed by evidence

This may take as cialis shop icks.org long as ten minutes but as the doctor gets to know that the disorder is severe to a person, the doctor increases the amount that is mg for that particular person. The patients should firstly be clearly examined and diagnosed before they go through cialis generico uk the treatment. Also they have many memories of great erections and pleasurable sexual experiences to help them cope with levitra sale icks.org their sexual dysfunction. buy cheapest viagra This makes shopping simple and even trouble free for customers.

©Steve Williams 2015

A Fucking road trip (Fucking, Austria)

“Didn’t we have a lovely time the day we went to Fucking?”
(with apologies to that Bangor-loving band Fiddler’s Dram).

The very quaint Fucking village

Indeed we did. It is the first time I have typed the word “Fucking” into the car’s GPS system. Though I have directed that word towards it many times.

Setting out from Munich, myself and two esteemed media colleagues (let’s call them Jane and Phil) embarked on a day trip to Fucking, a village just four kilometres east of the German border.
Why? To quote Sir Edmund Hillary, (who possibly never went to Fucking), “because it is there.”
Also for the giggling, childish entertainment value. And the selfies.

Fucking is quiet, very quiet — it is a tiny, picturesque rural village, with only one hundred
Fucking residents.

I was expecting to see tourist coaches spewing out pissed Aussie bogans and English chavs,
intent on stealing the Fucking signs. Thankfully no.

There is not much in Fucking at all. There are no Fucking shops, no Fucking restaurants, not even
a Fucking hotel. The only Fucking living things we encountered were some Fucking cows,
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We enjoyed an excellent lunch at the Gasthof Lindlbauer in the next village of Haid, with an interesting decor of former Fucking animals, though we still had a lovely Fucking view.
The very hospitable waitress asked if we’d come for the Fucking experience, and duly presented us with bottles of Fucking Hell beer. Prost!

On reflection, it was a truly Fucking memorable day.

The Fucking directions
This Fucking way
A former Fucking resident
Another Fucking sign
The Fucking end

Words and images ©Steve Williams 2015