Thought For The Day No. 43 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his/her spiritual being..[and] inner self. Whether or not he/she is actually present, whether or not he/she is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out...but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, of my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as satisfying. 'Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death'.

Viktor Frankl

Transparent If Slightly Misted Estonia

Notwithstanding yesterday's post about the economic situation, I read some encouraging news today, or rather figures, concerning the Transparency International figures on corruption. As posted before, corruption is one of those buzz words which we hear a lot about, but in any case I think it's good to know that Estonia is as high as 26 (out of 178) just behind France and the US and ahead of Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary and any baltic state beginning with 'L'.

Stick With The Winners On Our Side Of The Atlantic - Walt Gleeson

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Winfrey... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. Starting as a rust repairer on a sewage trawler in international waters, on one cent fifty per month, Walt soon rose to control the entire US fleet, and he never even graduated from High School. His career has spanned over half a decade, during which he has acted as advisor to such alumni as Richard Nixon, Oliver North and Mike Tyson, and he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You, My Lai Was Just a Blip and Become a Billionaire Whilst On The Toilet, Walt is the Puumaja Crew's personal realization and fulfilment coach, whatever that is.

Walt has just returned from a trip to Europe..

Hello all, Walt here, I'm so glad to be back in the land of the free following my trip to the old country - Europe. The whole thing was a mixed bag of experiences I have to say.
First of all, the sheer poverty of the place. It's just everywhere. From the moment I got off the plane at Helsinki Vantaa airport, I could tell I'd arrived, if not in the third world then the second and a half world at the very least, from the tiny little cars to the  puny, emaciated kids, to the safe houses for Islamists to the criminal income tax rates and 'free' healthcare.

Struggling to find a McDonalds at the airport, all I had to make do with was something called 'Hessburger', which my wife Betty pointed out to me, sounds more like 'horseburger'! So I had to make do with an inferior European burger, not for the first time. Sure, the Europeans are big on their street cafes, at least in the southern part of the country, but many of these are just one offs, they're not part of a syndicated chain nor do they have any desire to be. Losers. The ingredients are these so called 'natural' products, made by, no doubt unwashed, hands, over an unacceptably long period of time, and it was difficult to find anything which contained corn syrup.

Many of the folks just don't seem to want to smile at you or wish you a nice day, either. I was treated with great rudeness at one of the hotels I stayed in in either Germany or Ireland, I don't remember which - they're so similar, and was asked curtly to 'please fill your name and address here and the porter will take your bags to your room'. Not a meaningless platitude or toothsome soft focus smile in sight


Then we get on to the legendary European cowardice. From the French resistance museum to the memorial to the landing of the British paratroopers at Arnhem, all one big mess of retreat and counter retreat until, thankfully, we came in and single handedly restored the Europe of our forefathers (I'm of Welsh-Sorbian heritage and my wife comes from an old Icelandic-Algerian family).

Once, whilst we were announcing to the entire restaurant that we were from the USA, we encountered an example of the legendary European stinginess, ordering a 'family size' plate of authentic European buffalo wings, it came on a plate, with a knife and fork, and not a bucket and spade!

I'm not saying that Europe doesn't have its good points - it does: the antique churches, domestic animals runing free in the streets, the beautiful girls, just waiting and praying for an American GI with a poorer command of the English language than they have to come and whisk them off to Little Cliff, West Dakota, it's a place with real potential some day to produce something really valuable and long lasting instead of the motley crue of composers, philosophers, writers, inventors, scientists, musicians, actors and sportspeople they've been churning out down the years...but I know where I hang my hat, and it'll always be here...stick with the winners!

Walt.

Thought For The Day No. 42 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

'That old law about an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind'.

Martin Luther-King

Travel Clichés

Some time ago I went on a writing course with a noted travel writer, who provided us with, amongst other things, a list of no-no clichés (see previous posts too)...

...so here are some of the most cringeworthy that you mind find in trave 'literature' - some of it might not even be directly taken from the canon of the Lonely Planet, Rough, and In Your Pocket guides and similar, but not much..

'snow-capped mountains'
'Majestic mountains'
'Lunar landscape'
'Narrow/winding cobbled streets'
'Perched on the hill/nestling in the valley'
'Like opening an oven door'
'Best kept secret'
'A land of contrasts'
'Where east meets west'
'The Athens of the North/Venice of the South'
'The real Borneo/Acapulco/Ulam Bator'
'In a time warp'
'Washed down with a glass of the local wine'

'Those wearisome adjectives of magnitude - big, great, vast, huge, tremendous, enormous, gigantic - which are nothing but emotive noises inviting the readers to do all the work. They are the plague of most travel books...'

...so there you go, I know some of our three  readers are budding travel writers and so hopefully this will have been 'food for thought' to coin another one..

New Flight Links To Tallinn

You will soon be able to get to (or escape from) Tallinn easier than ever; Ryanair are at long last hooking themselves up to the land of Kalev and, since the country is so small anyway, there is none of the usual landing at a disused world war one aerodrome a five hour journey away from the billed destination. They hope to shift 300,000 passengers per year through Tallinn airport, which will amount to a huge proportion of total throughput (for example in 2009, post downturn, a little over 1.3 million people, or rather 1.3 million passengers - some of whom could presumably be the same person travelling multiple times - went through Tallinn, curiously approximately the population of the whole country).

Thanks to the blue- and yellow-winged harp, Tallinn is going to be linked to Dublin, 'London' (acutally 'Luton aaiiirrrpawwt'), Dusseldorf, Edinburgh, Milan, Stockholm and Oslo, if any of those places grab you. Services start on 14th December (Dublin) though you're too late to have grabbed any special offers celebrating the event.

As if that were not enough, Sleazyjet are also upping their connections here, flying three times a week to and  from the laughably-named John Lennon airport in Liverpool, to join the existing Stansted service.

So now there's no excuse for the olds to not come and visit me...oh hang on, they're already coming next month...

With thanks to George Francis for drawing our attention to the news, via the Tallinn Property facebook page.

Remembering George Dawes

...he's not dead, was just reminiscing about shooting stars, here, and here.

Thought For The Day No. 41 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Robert Heinlein

Can You Be Pro-Business And Still Be 'Alright'? - Seth's Blog

It's official - it's ok to be pro-business and yet not a heartless, polluting, labour-exploiting, cigar-chooing, call-girl patronizing shit, at least nowadays.

Check out this excellent post by my big brother Seth Godin. You see, paradigms have changed. Whilst minimum wages, environmental laws and the like USED to be something of a hindrance to business (when businesses were largely factory-based) this is no longer the case. This is because business needs people, first and foremost, and more to the point healthy, cooperative people, not downtrodden drones.

So unless you're in Russia or something, you can sleep easy whilst you vote for a business-friendly party (like IRL, in Estonia, for example) - they're not the enemy any more and you have an excuse to do the decent thing and chuck the Pete Seeger records at last!

History Of Estonia 101: Part Seven

Continuing from the last post...'

Of Palaces and Emancipation


So, from 1721 for sure, Estonia was a part of Peter the Great's Russian Empire, and continued to be so long after Peter. It was during this time that the Kadriorg Palace was built outside (then) Tallinn; named after his wife, Catherine I, it was not quite on the same scale as St Petersburg but employed an architect, Zemtsov, who'd been involved in the construction of the new city on the Neva. After Peter died in 1725 his wife showed little interest in visiting her summer home (which was still unfinished) and the palace we have today in fact dates from about a hundred years later, when Tsar Nicholas I ordered a drastic renovation in 1827. The palace gives its name to the surrounding district today.

Though the good old Swedish times were definitely over, many aspects of life continued as they had been. The two Duchies (Estonia and Livonia) enjoyed a relatively high degree of autonomy, in the same way that the Duchy of Finland to the North (a Russian acquisition after the Napoleonic wars) also did. A relatively progressive part of the empire, a trend that was to continue in the twentieth century, Estonia saw the abolition of serfdom in 1819, far earlier than in Russia proper, enabling the former peasants to own their own land or move to Tallinn or the other cities.

Nevertheless it was not all rosy. A disastrous series of crop failures in the early 1840s saw famine and epidemic (curiously almost concurrent with the Irish potato famine). Russian rule also brought a new religious denomination, Orthodoxy. There had long been orthodox people of Russian descent living in Estonia, most notably old believers descended from refugees who had refused to accept the reforms of Patriarch Nikon in 1666-1667. Now native Estonians could convert to Orthodoxy following the establishment of a bishopric at Riga. In a manner which only really resonates if you know anything of the Estonian character, mass conversions started in part due to the fact that the Orthodox church taxes were lower than the Lutheran ones, and upon the (no doubt intentionally spread) rumours that converts would be rewarded lands in return. Many disappointed peasants re-converted to Lutheranism when it became clear that this benefit was not to materialize! In this respect it could be argued that there was more freedom in Estonia at the time than there was in Sweden, surprisingly enough, where it was illegal for a citizen to convert to any denomination other than the state Lutheran church until 1860.

Unfortunately for Estonia's occupying powers, however, in a pattern which was to be repeated later on in Estonia (and in many places around the world) granting greater freedoms, far from placating demands for freedom, often has the reverse effect, and leads to more and more demands...

Kadriorg Palace in winter, believe it or not.

History of Estonia 101: Part Six

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...


Part Six: End of Swedish Rule, Beginning of Russian

As seen in the previous post, Estonia came under the aegis of the Swedish empire, starting in the sixteenth century and being consolidated through the seventeenth at the high water mark of Swedish power. This was later to be viewed as something of a golden age and so was not set to last forever, as golden ages generally don't.

By 1700 some of the other European powers had had enough of this and an alliance of Russia, Denmark and Saxony attacked. The war went well for Sweden to begin with. The Danes were soon dissuaded from being a part of the squabble by their co-nordic enemies, who, together with the Dutch and British navies (the British later switched sides in this war, something to bear in mind when English people point the finger at Italy for doing the same in WW2) landed to the North of Copenhagen in August. The Danes were to reenter the war later on however. In November a Russian force besieged Narva, a town which has had far more than its fair share of destruction down the years, and this was defeated by a Swedish force somewhat smaller than it.  Incidentally Swedish hegemony extended to the east of Estonia itself, to include Ingria, a region surrounding present-day St Petersburg (which was about to be founded) where a language related to Estonian was spoken.

Charles XII, the Swedish King, turned his attention to his enemies to the south, notably Augustus the Strong who ruled over a vast territory incorporating Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, defeating him  twice, most decisvely at Fraustadt in 1706, but in so doing he left the back door open for Peter the Great (for it is he) of Russia to re-take parts of Ingria and found his eponymous polis. This was too much for Charles XII who, in a move that was eerily echoed in later invasions of Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, led and ill-fated invasion of Russia via the Ukraine, with Moscow as his ulitmate aim. A series of setbacks culminating in the famous Battle of Poltava saw the end of his ambitions in that respect, though not the end of Swedish rule just yet.

Back to Estonia, Charles XII continued to maintain a navy in the Baltic and so remained a thorn in Peter's side, leading to the latter's eventual capture of Tallinn (and Riga) in 1710. Thus for the first time in its history, Tallinn came under Russian rule and an unhappy precedent was set. The Swedes took a long time to accept their loss of Tallinn and Estonia in general, continuing to launch harrassing raids on the country, and the Russian occupation did not become a de jure matter until the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. Finland remained a Swedish possession for much, much longer, happily for them.

The first century of Russian rule did not see a radical change in the Estonian way of life, however, with the Lutheran church remaining predominant and the ruling classes remaining largely German speaking. Modern day Estonia was split, as it had been for many centuries, between the Governate (Guberniya) of Estonia and the Governate of Livonia. The latter was centred around Riga, and incorporated much of South Estonia including Tartu. The Governate of Estonia enjoyed a very illustrious roster of governors down the years, including Price Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov (1711-1719, a personal friend of Peter, also Duke of Ingria and even de facto ruler of Russia for two years during the reign of Catherine I),  Gustav Otto Douglas (1738-1740, actually a Swedish turncoat who had been captured by the Russians and was now in their service) and Peter August Friedrich von Holstein-Beck (1743-1753, two beer brands in the one name). Estonia was no doubt a prestigious acquisition for the Russians, as indeed it has been for all of its occupiers.

This rather garish map depicts Russian gains (the dark green hatching) at Sweden's expense (yellow) following the 1721 Treaty of Nystad. Interestingly enough the Russians took the north shore of lake Ladoga from Finland, as they were to do once again in WW2. The territory gained includes all of modern day Estonia, the northern part of Latvia (which together with south Estonia made up the Livonian lands) and Ingria, the region to the East of the Narva River, and bits of Karelia.

Fair one?...

Seems America is pretty polarized about the ground zero mosque saga. I know we've been critical of Islam on this blog before, but this in no way, shape or form takes on a bigoted and irrational hue (or it's not meant to anyway) but rather we think that Islam should stand up and give an account for its beliefs and precepts the same as everything else does, and not merely be dismissed in an 'all muslims are terrorists' / 'british muslims should be proud to be british and muslim' soundbite, depending on which side of the fence you are on.

So we're definitely not favouriting anything like this!!!

Thought For The Day No, 40 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.

George MacDonald

What Strangers Lurk On Facebook

Just to reassure people in the light of recent posts that I haven't completely lost it, and in the interest of balance, I'd like to relate something interesting that happened to me not long ago, at least I thought it was interesting..

As posted long ago, I'd suggested the wisdom of buying silver or, if you can afford it, gold, as a hedge against inflation, currency devaluations or general mismanagement of economies by governments that don't really know what they're doing. I still stand by that (indeed, I opened an online account at goldmoney.com, with just a relatively small amount of money, though it's a start) although I'm also prepared to stand by the fact that I don't have a crystal ball and that this movement might prove to be pie in the sky as so many other have.

Be that as it may I signed up to one or two Facebook groups of enthusiasts (who were generally much more enthusiastic than I am) of gold and silver and related issues, many of whom are based in the States. One day I got a friend invite from someone whose name was Joseph and who'd evidently thought we'd be of a like mind, and who'd tracked me down via one of those groups. Seemed like an interesting character, had been in the US military and served, by the looks of it, in Iraq. He liked the San Diego Chargers but I was prepared to forgive that.

Before I knew it, I was in for a whole load of invites, recommendations and postings which were, well, they were very political, and not really related to G& S. Things like survivalism (hiding out in the desert in a sealed impregnable box with enough supplies to last though the streams of people of colour coming out of the cities, until the latter devoured each other and it was safe to come out) and 'I support Israel's right to defend itself'.

Now, I don't know about the Israeli situation, maybe the government there is as brutal and heavy handed as they say it is, but the fact remains, I was only interested in my little gold and silver enquiries and hadn't realised I'd had to sign up to a whole agenda of other stuff ... talk about getting out of my depth.

This is something that seems to happen more and more, especially in the States, this kind of agenda-ism. It seems that, you can't think for yourself on various issues and come to your own conclusions, but rather, have to sign up for a whole smorgasbord of accompaniments that you frankly don't want. So, you think that guns are a bad thing? Well, better understand that you're also pro-abortion and same sex marriage and like to talk about how the christian religion was solely set up as an exercise in mind control. Want less government interference in certain areas? Not without an M16, paid up support for the Israeli government and irrational screaming outbursts against Canada and Europe you don't.

Why can we not pick and choose for ourselves? I realise that certain beliefs tend to go together but these hodge-podges of conflicting and contradicting shibboleths and stereotypes that are forced upon us are as obvious as a beach ball in the snow, do not help anyone, and hinder progress.

Some time later Joseph disappeared from my Fabcebook list of friends- Maybe I'd  posted something that wasn't from the same hymn sheet as he wields, said something cynical (or rather, true) about American 'friendly fire' incidents on British troops and others in Iraq or Afghanistan, or maybe he'd even found his way to this blog and read one of my, er,..Walt's posts - who knows. But in hounour of this oddest of social networking dalliances, I'd like to remind Joseph and others like him, be they right or left or centre, that there is still relative freedom of speech and availability of information in much of the western world, and for as long as there is, and as long as people keep thinking and don't just blindly swallow everything that someone with a microphone and and imposing voice feeds them, like so much candy floss, people can choose for themselves what they think on various issues, and don't have to 'join your club'. Grow up!

Remembering The Dead

..much as I dislike the hippy ideal I can always make an exception, everything is not so black and white after all...

Thought For The Day No. 39 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

..psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

When proper respect towards the dead is shown at the end and continued after they are far away, the moral force (tê) of a people has reached its highest point

Ancient Chinese, Analects.

...so the Lithuanians do have the right idea then!

History of Estonia 101: Part Five

This is part five in a series which we hadn't updated for a good couple of weeks but, since nothing much has happened here in Estonia since then, we'll continue where we left off...

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...


Part Five: of Gustavus Adolphus, Ivan the Terrible and Martin Luther

The very title of this piece indicates the nature of Estonia's bridging North, East and West, and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw influence from all three directions (plus the South if you include the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth).

As seen in the previous post, the Livonian confederation, which corresponded to modern day Latvia and Estonia and was made up of a patchwork quilt of bishoprics, medieval fiefdoms and the two most northerly Hanseatic ports of Riga and Reval (Tallinn) was shaky at best. The sixteenth century saw the cracks turn into gaping holes when in the 1550s, the disintegration led to the ever-opportunistic Russia moving in to fill the power vacuum, with a military invasion under Tsar Ivan IV (yes, the terrible) in 1558. Incidentally this was the same year that Elizabeth I ascended to the throne of England. She had nothing to do with the Russian invasion. Dorpat (Tartu - which as we have seen had beeb a Russian city in its foundation) and Narva, unsurprisingly, were taken and Reval was besieged. The Reval city council, then as now never slow on the uptake, appealed to the Swedish King Eric XIV for military assistance, which he duly obliged, presumably sensing easy pickings. From an Estonian perspective it would seem that it was a case of the lesser of two evils (or even the least of several); the country's northern and linguistic neighbour, Finland, had gradually come under Swedish domination through the course of the later middle ages and in any case Sweden had become something of a regional power by now. Traces of this period can even be seen on Estonia's coat of arms, which features three blue lions on a gold background (or 'Or, three lions passant guardant azure', if you want the proper heraldic description) which of course remain the colours on the Swedish flag to this day.

After the defeat of the Russians Sweden divided the country into two, the northern part constituing the 'Duchy of Estonia' (as had been the case in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, only this time Denmark had been the colonial power until its hasty selling off of its territory to the Teutonic knights) was secured after the Battle of Wenden in 1578; the southern half 'Swedish Livonia' covered roughly the same territory as the old Livonian confedaration (ie most of Northern Latvia) though this was not secured until much later, due to another regional power, the recently formed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, having taken some Estonian lands. Many Estonians are unaware of this occupation, which was comparatively short lived, from the 1580s until Sweden's defeat of Poland-Lithuania in 1629.

Swedish rule under Gustavus II (Adolphus) saw an improvement in conditions for many people, with greater autonomy being granted to the peasantry in 1631 and the establishment of a printing press, a relatively new invention, at Tartu the following year. Not for nothing were these times (retrospectively) referred to as 'the good old Swedish times'. But they were not to last forever..

Denmark for its part did not give up without a fight this time (if you remember it had re-taken some Estonian territory in the form of the Bisopric of Ösel-Wiek (Saaremaa and Läänemaa) in the 1560s, but the baltic was clearly not big enough for two Scandinavian powers and the territory was ceded to Sweden. Since the Kingdom of Denmark included Norway, via a union of crowns, it could be said that the era represented a pan-Scandinavian intervention in the region, something that would not have gone amiss much later on in history...

In the meantime, the ruling classes would still have spoken 'low' German, i.e. the form spoken in much of northern Germany, and indeed been ethnic Germans, whilst the bulk of the populace spoke Estonian of course. The north German connection meant that it was only a matter of time after Martin Luther issued his '95 Theses' in 1517 for Lutheran ideas to percolate through; indeed the (Danish) Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek was Lutheran from the outset. Since the religious changeover was likely to have been carried through by the ruling classes, with presumably little protest from the ordinary folk one way or another, and the state by this time was becoming more and more stable under the new occupier, Estonia escaped the horrors of the religious wars of Western Europe. No counter-reformations, divorces, burnings or rival translations here. Either that or Lutheranism happened to sit well with Estonian's methodical and no nonsense way of doing things. Or alternatively that then as now they were not particularly pious people. Or all of the above...

Incidentally the first extant book to have been printed in the Estonian language (though printed at Wittenberg in Germany) dates from this period, a Lutheran catechism from 1535.

                          Albrecht Dürer's 'Three Mighty Ladies From Livonia' (1521)

Retrospective map (top) of medieval Livonia from the time of contemporary Swedish Estonia/Livonia, whose borders it roughly shared and below, less pretty but more cartographically rigorous map of Swedish Estonia /Livonia and environs.

Walt Gleeson With The Story Of Tragic Dwight, 2

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Winfrey... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. Starting as a rust repairer on a sewage trawler in international waters, on one cent fifty per month, Walt soon rose to control the entire US fleet, and he never even graduated from High School. His career has spanned over half a decade, during which he has acted as advisor to such alumni as Richard Nixon, Oliver North and Mike Tyson, and he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You, My Lai Was Just a Blip and Become a Billionaire Whilst On The Toilet, Walt is the Puumaja Crew's personal realization and fulfilment coach, whatever that is.


Hi Walt here, with an urgent message for you...


Here everything has to go in soft focus, with some slow, mournful reflective, twangy guitar music of the type you got on that movie about the gay cowboys who were much better looking than more or less everybody...

"Ok now we've  got that in place, I'd like to tell you about Dwight....Dwight was born in an ordinary small town, in an ordinary state in middle america. Dad was a cop, mom stayed at home looking after Dwight and his two older sisters. But Dwight was different..."


Cue zinging sound that they make by sliding a piece of metal along the steel strings of an electric guitar

"Early on, when he was just short of his second birthday however, his parents noticed that he couldn't throw a baseball overarm all the way from the outfield, but rather just lamely tossed it in a kind of uncoordinated spasm worthy of on English gayman. Horrified at this affliction, Dwight's parents Brandylene-Jo and Seth, took him to all the doctors in the area and even went as far as New York City to find a cure, just to make Dwight a normal little boy".

Cut to Dwight's grandparents who explain that Dwight is a bubbly boy and full of beans, just to differentiate him from all other people of his age, and that all this means that he probably won't be a starter for the Kansas City Royals, though they'll probably be dead by then and not have to face the shame in the street; all this interlaced with a few finger-picked minor 7th chords..

Show Walt arriving at Dwight's home  in his cadillac and waving to the small child through closed window whilst puffing on a big cigar..

Cut to Dwight surrounded by older kids, playing a game a running round just to underline the fact that he is a normal little kid just like you or I and not some kind of freak as such.

"We ask you to help Dwight, and others like him, but especially Dwight (some of the other ones are black, for example) by sending a donation, as much as you can (but not less than 99.99 USD) to waltgleeson.com and make a little boy and his parents very happy by helping him to not still be throwing like a girl on his third birthday".

Music fades out and cheesy, soft focus family pic of everyone's plastic looking faces appears..