Anonymous Rex’s Weblog

When I moved to Massachusetts recently I quit my membership with KnuckleUp gym in Atlanta.  I stood by KnuckleUp for two years, even though their gym flooded and never re-opened and I had to spend countless hours commuting to Roswell just to train.  I also acted as a substitute instructor without asking for anything in return.  When I finally left, I had a pretty horrible experience at the hands of KnuckleUp’s business partner: ASF international.

I’m a martial artist and I move around a lot–so I’m used to dealing with these contract companies.  But ASF is far and away the worst.  A quick search of ripoff.com will yield dozens of horror stories from people who have been victimized by this company.  KnuckleUp management said––not to me, but where I could hear it––that ASF has an informal policy in which they never allow membership cancellations.

ASF is like Comcast: they don’t honor contracts and think that their customers are slaves.  Only ASF is worse: Comcast at least provides a service, ASF makes their money by NOT providing a service.  Every piece of paper work they lose, every clerical error they make, is another month of payments they try to extract from your bank account.  Companies like this need to be dealt with aggressively and SHUT DOWN.  They are only allowed to exist because we, the people, are too lazy and too beaten down to fight back.

Here’s what we can do:

1) I will never again join a gym that works with ASF.  There are other companies that do the exact same thing and are far more pleasant to work with.

2) I filed a formal complaint with the FTC.  EVERYONE needs to do this.  The FTC looks for patterns and if half the people ASF have victimized did this, the FTC would intervene.

3) DO NOT speak to ASF on the phone.  Use e-mail.  Not only should customers not have to spend 30 minutes on hold, but ASF are liars and every communication from them must be in writing so that they can be held to it.

4) You don’t have to tolerate automatic debits.  Call your bank and get them cancelled.  Hell, the bank WANTS your money to stay in the bank. This will turn the tables on ASF and force THEM to deal with YOU.

5) Below is a transcript of my e-mail correspondence with ASF (Names and faces have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty).  I am reposting it here to show that A) these companies try to bluff you into paying them and that B) standing firm by the terms of your contract does get results.

Before I go on, let me explain my specific situation: My gym told me they wanted a copy of my lease as well as an out of state driver’s license as proof that I moved.  This in itself is ridiculous: I only signed a three-year contract because I was told it was void if I moved more than 25 miles–not if I took up residence in another state.  Furthermore, requesting a driver’s license is an obvious stall tactic: you can’t get a driver’s license until you have a lease or a utility bill.  So the whole system is set up so that ASF can get something for nothing.

I’m only moved as a student and I don’t want to claim residency in Massachusetts.  I explained this to KnuckleUP and they told me I could send in a student ID instead of a driver’s license.  ASF refused to honor this.  Here’s what happened:

Last night I was appalled to learn that some rather close friends of mine have still not seen this–or more likely have seen it and repressed it. C’mon people, this has been viewed on youtube almost a thousand times. Don’t be the last one to join the online sensation.

Don’t think the situation in Iraq is depressing enough? Google the words, “pain ray.” You’ll see it’s no joke. The military has been advancing this project under different names for years. First they called them “microwave weapons” then “direct energy weapons.”

Here’s how it works: energy waves–that are essentially microwaves–are fired at the enemy. Bare in mind, “the enemy” is probably going to be a crowd of starving brown people of whom one may have terrorist affiliations. The waves can be designed to penetrate just under the skin to the nerve endingscausing a great deal of pain. The waves also cause the skin to heat up to 130 degrees, which is supposed to create a sensation like, “a hot iron pressed against you.” I have also read reports of neuro-scientists at major universities refusing to cooperate with the military in trying to create weapons that target the pain centers of the brain.

As early as 2002, they were proposing mounting these things on planes so that an entire population could be pain-rayed. In 2004, they started looking for ways to mount them on urban patrol vehicles in what was dubbed “Project Sheriff.”

These things are marketed as a “non-lethal weapons” that will result in fewer casualties. In fact, the use of direct energy weapons was quietly part of John Kerrys platform for how to improve Iraq. Heres why non-lethal weaponry is bullshit:

1) Theres no such thing as non-lethal. Anyone remember Moscow, October, 2002? Chechen rebels took over a theater. Russia used an experimental “aerosol anesthetic” which ended up killing 42 terrorists and 120 hostages. It would have been cheaper just to bomb the place. Doctors couldnt even treat the wounded because the Russians refused to say what sort of gas it was. And yet less than a year later, Rumsfield was lamenting why we dont use some sort of knockout gas in Iraq.

This applies to the direct-energy weapons as well. Think about what a hamster does in the microwave. There are some ex-military claiming that we have already used microwave weapons in Iraq. There have been reports of bodies found shriveled to one meter in length.

2) Ethically and politically-if you wouldn’t shoot someone, you shouldnt use chemicals or pain rays either. In Somalia there were rumors starving children approaching our convoys might have bombs, so we shot them with chunks of cork instead of bullets. That will really improve our reputation.

3) These devicesespecially pain raysviolate international law. Now Anne Coulter and some other conservatives have said that there is no such thing as international law and that effectively might makes right. These people have also said that in war it is totally acceptable to kill thousands of civilians. But even the Bush administration just reversed their position on the Geneva conventions.

4) We dump countless billions into military research for useless weapons because the defense contractors effectively own a lot of politicians. There is a reason the incumbency rate is around 98
nd we spent a billion outfitting a fleet of submarines. What the hell are we going to do with submarines in Iraq? Meanwhile, our troops don’t have body armor and have to buy it themselves. Apparently the body armor company needs be doling out as many bribes as the submarine company. We dont need nanites, or teleportation machines, or pain-rays, or the Death Star. We need body armor!

5) Non-lethal weaponry will inevitably be used on usAmerican citizens. In the civil rights movement they used dogs and fire-hoses. If they had had pain-rays in Birmingham back then, you’re goddamn right they would have used them. In fact, I predict that before I die, direct-energy weapons will be used in North America against WTO protestors.

6) High-tech weaponry worked in the Cold War; it wont work in the war on terror because it’s asymmetrical warfare. Virtually the entire terrorist arsenaleverything from guns, to training, to anthrax–has been stolen either from us or the Russians. And we really can’t blame the Russians anymore. Every wonder why Hezbollah has so many rockets? I mean, they’ve been raining rockets down on Israel for a week now. No one seems to remember that something like 750 stinger missiles were stolen from a US base in Iraq. Gee, whatever happened to those missiles? If we invent a pain ray, it will only be a year or two until terrorists steal one and use it on either US soldiers in Iraq, civilians in Israel, or civilians in New York.

What we can do:

1) In the short run: sign this petition:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/DeathRay/petition.html

also, tell all your friends about direct-energy weapons. If its political suicide to endorse them, then congress will stop playing lackeys for the defense contractors.

2) In the long run: don’t invest in Defense Tech! I won’t lie: defense stock has sky-rocketed and a lot of people have cashed in on that. I’d feel better about myself selling heroin to junkies than loaning money to build death rays. When you buy defense stock it’s like the opposite of those Save-the-Children commercials. Your 60 cents a day goes to microwave children in Iraq.

3) Campaign finance reform! Campaign finance reform is the way to destroy all of the world’s evils. If corporations can no longer fill the war-chests of politicians than we could finally have something resembling a Democracy in this country.

Harry Potter is divisive and polarizing. Look at my family: my mother and brother have read all the books and have what I consider an unhealthy obsession. My brother made it a point to purchase the last book as soon as it went on sale at midnight and to complete it before dawn. My father–who does not listen to music, watch movies, or read fiction–views Harry Potter as yet another frivolous example of why novels are a waste of time.

I am not as stoic as my father: Harry Potter annoys the shit out of me. I have never read one of the books. I saw two of the movies with my family on the condition that we go to the Alamo Drafthouse. My brother and mother were enraptured while my father and I knocked back round after round wondering what the hell was going on and when this would all end.

My problem is not that people want to read Harry Potter–it’s that they are always trying to indoctrinate me and then defending their habit to the death. It reminds me of teenagers trying to get other people to smoke–they know its bad for them, but they will feel better if more people around them do it.

Harry Potter is a sickness: I have a friend who spent something like a thousand dollars on sets of Harry Potter legos. Whenever I visited his house, my non-Potter friend and I would secretly mess with his toys. Sometimes we would separate Harry Potter’s torso from his body and put the pieces in the mouths of the Cerberus figure. Othertimes, we would bend Harry over at the waist and line up a gauntlet of Hogswart students ready to give him some bad loving with their wands.
Why do I hate Harry Potter so when I have not even read one of the books? There seems to be something about the books that is fundamentally selfish and opposed to the cause of social justice. Joseph Campbell described the cycle of the hero–which occurs in all great myths and stories– as separation, initiation, and return. The hero becomes initiated so that they can return to where they came from and help others. But the premise of Harry Potter: that there is both a mundane world and a magical world, and that wizards care only for their own world, makes this impossible. Harry Potter never really returns.

Wizards are only concerned about their own little pocket dimension. They have virtually no limits on their powers: a single wizard could make a potion that cures AIDS, summon a spirit to undo global warming, or conjure food to feed Africa. But what do they do with their power? They make magical frog shaped-candies that hop. That’s not just selfish, that’s criminal. It’s utter contempt for the human race. Hogswart is like the Republican National Convention: a gathering of the rich and powerful so that they can congratulate each other and make plans to grow even more rich and powerful. All while maintaining a laissez faire attitude to the less fortunate and washing their hands of any social responsibility.

On a lesser note, I am bothered by the magical creatures that inhabit the pocket dimension where Hogswart is located. Who gets to decide what constitutes a magical creature and what doesn’t? The ministry of magic? Then they take it upon themselves to isolate these creatures from the rest of the world, reducing the earth’s biodiversity. The platypus is unique. Should not it be removed from the planet? What about the narwhal? This is even more problematic when applied to sentient beings. Consider: there is nothing inherently magical about a troll. A troll is a human who is taller and stronger than average. Robert Wadlow of Alton Illinois was over 11 feet tall. In JK Rowling’s world, how tall would Robert have been allowed to grow before he was branded as magical, abducted by wizards, and all memory of him erased?

You know who believes in separating people? Hate groups. “Separate the people and there will be peace” has been the anthem of the KKK since Reconstruction. If Hitler had been a wizard, I’m sure he would have placed Jews on the list along with goblins and trolls.

Finally, the appeal of Harry Potter seems to be an infantile fantasy about being the most important person in the world. Nothing in Rowling’s world seems to have any real significance or meaning except as it relates to this one person. The mundane world, as I have shown, is irrelevant, and the magical world seems to be entirely dependent on Harry Potter. There does not seem to be a single plot arc which is not resolved by Harry being even more special and more important than he was before. The world exists for Harry instead of Harry existing for the world. That sort of fantasy is unhealthy–especially for children who already struggle to understand that their is more to the world then themselves.

Did you know?: The name Harry Potter was clearly stolen from 1986 film Troll. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092115/

Update 10/8/06:

I found this article on Slate.com. This is basically making the same argument–but this guy has actually read the books. (What a loser.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2150585/

Update 12/24/06

I have already shown how the name “Harry Potter” was borrowed from the 1986 film troll. Well recently something came up about the name “Hermione” too. Hermione-in addition to being a name taken from “A Winter’s Tale,” is also borrowed from TV witches: Hermione Baddely played Elspeth in the “Bewitched” TV series and was in Mary Poppins, and Hermione Gingold was in the movie “Bell Book and Candle.”

The name got interesting when I received a copy of The Occult Roots of Nazism for Christmas. Apparently, Hermione is the name of one of the Germanic tribes described by Tacitus. At the dawn of the 20th century, Pan-Germanists looked to Tacitus in forming their occultist national mythology. The tribe Hermione were made into the high-priests of Wotan and the keepers of the Aryan gnosis. Coincidence? Isn’t JK Rowling blonde?