Vince Gilligan Interview With Charlie Rose

Things acquire the status of being good or evil only if someone - anyone - cares about them one way or the other.
Richard Taylor, Good And Evil, p.31

It is deep into the dog days of summer. The Oracle of Ottawa has been on his usual baseball watching binge, and enjoying every moment of it. Why today the Oracle got in three complete games! As the last west coast game ended, the Oracle of Ottawa flipped to PBS Watertown in the hope of catching something interesting and was quiet surprised to find that Charlie Rose was on. The interview was with the creator of Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan, on stage, live, at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.

Vince Gilligan(left) - Aaron Paul(right) - who got it from Ep. 1 

The Oracle of Ottawa was intrigued. At last, the man himself! And it being the last and final season of Breaking Bad, the Oracle of Ottawa was hoping for the sincere, so obvious, explanation of what Breaking Bad was really about. There was nothing to lose now, the last eight episodes are in the can, and there is nothing left to lose by explaining the truth to the complacent American audience what the whole epic was really about. To hear the words right out the mouth of the mind that created it all. Or so I thought. What the Oracle witnessed was bizarre, surreal and completely raving American Psycho!  

Much to my amazement and shock, the Oracle of Ottawa had to come to the flooring realization that Vince Gilligan is in essence an idiot savant! Through the whole interview he stuck to his "awe shucks" marketing routine, choosing his words carefully, fully pondering there future possible impact on his further possible projects! He truly has not or ever had a clue to the impact of the prophetic epic that he has been allowed to tell, and its real meaning! At the time of this writing the Oracle of Ottawa is still reeling...

The first episode of Breaking Bad was one of the most powerful works of television that the Oracle has ever experienced. A brilliant chemist ends up teaching high school chemistry somewhere in a Southern US state. It is no doubt a "right to work" state, the money is lousy, there is no union, there is a handicapped child, and to add insult to injury, there is the insane American class burden of Walter having to portray to society that he is indeed middle class and is yet left by contemporary American society to some how pay for it all with nothing. Then there comes the cancer diagnosis! To this viewer in Canada, one could tell right away that Walter has no medical insurance to cover this catastrophic illness. Forced to the wall Walter abandons his morals and makes a monstrous conscious decision to survive long enough to provide for his family after his demise.

Contrast this with a Canadian high school chemistry teacher in Ontario, Canada  with Walters credentials. This teacher makes $70,000 - $130,000 a year, minimum. He is a senior department head, he might even teach a class or two a week. If this man comes a downer with a cancer diagnosis, it is just another life hurdle, certainly not a death sentence. He will have government and private additional insurance. He will be given sick leave at full pay, or very nearly, for as long as it takes. His chance of a full remission and recovery is astoundingly high. Not like Walter...

What Breaking Bad is really about is the death of the American Dream. It is a prophetic epic of the future of America. It is a symbolic tale of the death of America. A republic and a dream built on an outmoded frontier mentality that peaked on a battle ship deck in a Japanese harbour sometime in 1945. Now the European Union is the biggest economy on Earth. The standard world currency is not the American dollar, it is the Euro. The grand cities that were once the arsenals of democracy rot in bankruptcy. We are told that it is all creative destruction. Everybody got the destruction, and it seems that the creative ability was also destroyed in the process also...

Ponder the carnage created by Walter White. Ponder the vast amount of state resources it takes to search him out and possibly stop him. Ponder the global social costs around the world. Walter White is (was?) just one ordinary man forced to abandon his society, the great Leviathan, and in turn it is more than just one life that becomes nasty, brutish and short. What will be our fate when the Walters start coming out of the woodwork in their thousands?

Postscript: The Oracle of Ottawa was shocked by Vince Gilligan when he could not explain Walter Smith's street name of Heisenberg, it is no doubt a tribute to Werner Heisenberg who unlike Walter Smith was able and allowed to make great contributions to the world as the father Quantum Mechanics.
Bryan Cranston in the character of Walter Smith always exudes the aura that he too could have done great things if something as mundane as an IPO had not gotten in the way. Werner Heisenberg was also the father of the Uncertainty Principle, do you get it now?

Toronto - How Dead Do You Have To Be?

These things happen. We are living in cheap times, and the fast lane is littered with some very expensive wrecks.
Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine, p. 228

If it wasn't for a clear headed citizen with his ankle bracelet cell phone, it is very likely that we would have never even heard of the death of  Sammy Yatim. The murder took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada sometime late last Friday night or early Saturday morning. Somehow the youngster slipped his clutch plates and ordered the clearing of a Toronto streetcar at knife point, so the story goes.

Glock 17 - plastic cops plastic gun...

Of course the street car driver hit the hidden panic button and every cop within a radius of God only knows quickly started to appear at the scene. Now if you know any old cops, the first thing that they will tell you is that the most dangerous thing in a cops life is another cop going for the gun too soon. Since 9/11 cops have been getting all the funding beyond their wildest dreams. We always hear about the Ninja like training that they all get today. And we have all heard about the latest body armour that even the most common beat cop gets in any city in Canada.

 So when it comes to disarming a lone nutter you would think that a big burly constable would walk right up to the mental miscreant and deftly disarm and subdue the poor citizen, armed with a knife, gun or both. Haven't any of these cops of today seen any recent movies? And as per the Oracle of Ottawa's view on the matter, it is much more fun to beat the crap out of someone face to face that threatens me then just shoot him from a great and safe distance. But that is just the Oracle, old school macho...

Well if you have seen the video, which appeared to the Oracle on Sunday last as he checked in to his You Tube account and noticed it in the popular now section! So that means that the whole world has or will soon see it. That sure is good for Canadian tourism isn't it? As the Oracle of Ottawa pressed the play button he was floored! Never in his life had he observed a cold blooded murder for real in a Canadian city. But if you watch the video carefully and count the shots fired, it seems that one of Toronto's "finest" emptied the contents of his Glock's clip into the kid. (9 Shots - listen and count carefully...)

 But it gets even worse, upon closer viewing. After all the shots are fired, and the mob of cops enter the bus, to subdue the corpse, you hear that unmistakable sound of a Taser being deployed! (At 1:00 on the video...) It is just unimaginable, but they Tasered the kid after they killed him! Now we all know that most police departments put their recruits through a ton of "wiring" tests before they are hired. Perhaps they should start screening for Dyslexia?

The real ironic, ignorant fact of this whole mess is that it got recorded from more than one angle. There is no way out. It makes the Oracle break into a wry smile. The results of living in our locked down world, that has most of us covered 24/7 as soon as we walk out the door in the morning is that the system is catching more cops than criminals! Do you think there is any information in that fact? Well do ya?

Justin Trudeau Stirs The ' Pot '

Free competition is, within itself, a co-operative process.
Henry Grady Weaver, The Mainspring Of Human Progress, p. 27

It was Thursday evening of the week recently passed that the Oracle of Ottawa caught the scorched talking heads, totally beside themselves, discussing the recent ideas on the summer stump, being presented by Canada's next Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, on the old vulgar media CTV television news channel. The golden boy was explaining the overall good sense of finally decriminalizing pot. The crowd was very receptive to his words, and to add horror to it all, this was deep in the 'Harper Government' ideological heartland somewhere out west in British Columbia! Ho Ho Ho!!

Conservative Buster...

 The Oracle of Ottawa  has informed the readers of this humble blog that the son has not fallen far from the tree of the father. And in the case of Justin Trudeau, he may be the rarity of the son that far exceeds the famous father. It seems that the son Justin, not only has a plan for the continuation of the construction of the Just Society,  but he has already figured out how he is going to pay for it! The little snots in short pants of the present Prime Ministers Office are very nervous indeed.

The second cumming is coming soon...

It was at this point that it all dawned on the Oracle of Ottawa that if pot was legalized for the purpose of smoking it, it would then be very easy to legalize all the other practical uses of hemp. The Oracle of Ottawa thinks of hemp as the bamboo of the New World. It is renewable, sustainable, and is a great carbon sink in these stuffy green house times that we presently live in. And did you know Dear Reader, that the fibre structure of hemp is perfect for fine paper production? Not to mention a great bio-fuel stock. And since hemp grows in Canada damn near as fast as bamboo in the Philippines, Canada would no longer have to cut down other types of valuable trees that take centuries to grow. It is all very stupid to cut down a tree that has taken 60 to 100 years to grow just to make it into arse wipe! Hemp fibre would actually be cheaper and yet provide a superior quality of cushioned arse wipe. We would soon wipe the Americans asses in the market place. Ponder the possibilities...

At the longest, the golden boy will be Prime Minister of Canada in less than two years. But as the Oracle of Ottawa has predicted, don't be surprised if the writ hits the ground as it is dropped in say the very near future. It is very hard to lose a campaign that consists of ideas whose time has finally come. All the spin doctors and fart catchers of the Prime Ministers Office and / or the Conservative party of Canada cannot even hope to stop that...

Detroit And The Death Of Capitalism

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small "yes" at the center of a vast "no".
Gore Vidal, The Selected Essays Of Gore Vidal, p. 14 

Detroit is not very far from the Oracle of Ottawa's bunker in south-end Ottawa. Why it is just a drive down the 416, a right onto the 401 to Windsor and then cross the bridge. Why even the two biggest local Detroit TV stations are included in the Oracles TV cable package, it is darn near like being there! In another Black Day In July, this time on July 18, 2013, Detroit has filed for Chapter 9 Bankruptcy, the largest filing of its type in the history of the United States (so far). 

Joe Louis Monument - Detroit

How in hell can the thirteenth largest city in the United States of America go bankrupt? And Detroit is not just another City, it was and still is to some extent, the Motor City, the Arsenal of Democracy, the Mother F*cking Big 'D'! In 1950 there were 1,850,000 in Detroit, as of 2013 there are 701,000.  You hear all kinds of causes, the most often heard is "white flight" caused by "deindustrialization". But if you dig into the nut of the matter you will soon discover that the real cause of the decline of Detroit is the charter townships!

It is impossible in Detroit to start up a Regional Municipality of Detroit! Although there is "only" 701,000 people in the old core of Detroit now, there is at present, over 5,000,000 people in the Detroit Metro Area! Now the Detroit Metro Area consists of 330 local governments (!) which by the 1947 legislation can never be annexed into an efficient administrative body! The Oracle can hear all the people in Canada and the European Union saying the same thing; How nuts is that?

At the time of this writing in Detroit there are 90,000 abandoned lots, 70,000 abandoned buildings, and 31,000 abandoned houses! The word is that you could place Paris and Bremen in the empty parts of Detroit and still have room left over! If you don't believe the Oracle of Ottawa just check out Google Earth and go for a street view walk in Detroit, or enter Detroit on You Tube and you can watch for hours in utter amazement and horror at how insane the whole mess really is. Why even the pigeons and shit hawks have given up on Detroit!  It is truly just about beyond comprehension! Is this the efficient result of Adam Smith's invisible hand?
 

Another favorite excuse of the right wing wack balls in the United States is that it is all the fault of Detroit being strongly Democrat for the last 50 years! But if that is indeed true why can't the Oracle of Ottawa find at least one small Detroit in the European Union or in Canada? And there are many cities in the European Union and Canada that are as old or much more older than Detroit! You will be able to come only to one conclusion, Detroit is not a disaster of circumstance, it is simply a disaster of governance.

City Of Ottawa - Casino Wars

At the end of reasons comes persuasion.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Sec. 612

As Ottawa fries like an egg on a curb in Death Valley who would ever think that the summer of 2013 would contain so much entertainment? Usually in the bake of the summer months in Ottawa very little of note takes place, especially the clash of titans and mice. That, in the past, has always waited for the commencement of the standard social season that starts sometime after Labour Day.

The winner is: Eugene Melnyk?

It all just blew up out of nowhere didn't it? One day nothing and then Ka-Boom! Gentleman Jim the Mayor of Ottawa thought he could brush off the boorish Eugene Melnyk just as he would a poor stakeholder or long time employee that has actually taken the high ground and refuses to step down. That bit that showed up on the Oracle of Ottawas supper time news recently explained every thing. That Melnyk guy was hotter than hell, at that last City Council meeting, wasn't he? That is all quite easy to explain, if you are familiar with the recent workings at the present city of wall - mart. Gentleman Jim and his band of pathetic burg(h)ers thought they could tell old Gene one thing behind closed doors and place the knife in his back in public just like a pesky outraged small stakeholder or senior employee. 

Well as we all know, that didn't work this time. Eugene Melnyk is the real deal. He is the 75th richest person in Canada, with a present net worth of around a billion dollars. More than enough money to carry out his threats. More than enough money to hire every private dick in Canada and totally destroy the present creepy altar boy of City Hall, once and for all. Many items would no doubt be hauled out of many dark closets, why not even the Chinese could save him...

Coming soon to Kanata??

As real power would have it, old Gene won't have to spend a cent. The creepy altar boy has done everything that he was told to do save and except bending over and spreading them. And to add insult to injury, he won't be getting his name on it, or anything near or around it. That bit where he showed up on CBC Radio news recently was an absolute howler of fear and collapse.

The last municipal election proved how the people are reacting today, it was the largest flush out of a council in the history of Ottawa. At the time of this writing it appears to the Oracle of Ottawa that it really is true that sometimes one has to flush twice. The Oracle of Ottawa like many stakeholders in Ottawa can hardly wait...

Atta' Boy Daniel 'Alfie' Alfredsson!

A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Sec. 450

'Alfie' Alfredsson is beyond any doubt National Hockey League Royalty. He was the 75th player to make the 1000 point list. There are only six active players at the time of this writing that are on the hallowed roll, and Alfie is one of the living active Greats. It all seemed to be such a done thing back a few weeks ago. Alfie decided to play one more year, and surely that year would be played in Ottawa, wouldn't it? Surely the Ottawa Senators would back their desire with the market price of this desired player. Wouldn't they?

Daniel Alfredsson - Living Legend

All the reporting in the local old style vulgar media did not fool the Oracle of Ottawa for a moment. And the Oracle of Ottawa was not in the least surprised in the outcome. There is no doubt in the Oracles view that the Senators brain-trust made the fatal error in attempting to "wall-mart" Alfie. Relax, we can get him for a song, he owns a house here in Ottawa, his family is grounded here, and all his do good'in social charity work is located here, and he is such a rube of a boy scout that he will probably take a huge cut just to fulfill his moral obligations. Well as we all know the egg is on managements face on this one. Alfie and his agent figured some things out and bailed.

When the Oracle of Ottawa first heard the astounding news that the nutter Mel-Dick terminated the Scotia Bank naming deal everything in the future is now in question. When the Oracle of Ottawa first heard of the Can Trash Center naming deal and all the side arrangements that is essentially giving it control even into player operations, well a really smart person could see the writing on the wall. The Ottawa Senators  is soon to become the Houston Astros of the NHL! The goal for the future is not to win but rather to lose large and utterly every year so as to make a fortune in the increased higher level of draft picks. Being in last place and a total loser can be very profitable, year in and year out can't it? 

All you guys in Detroit are the real winners. Your chances of seeing the Red Wings drinking from the Stanley Cup just increased greatly. And the Alfer is from great genetic stock, probably related to Eric the Red, with great hockey player makeup, and with way more than one more season left in him. Looks like a dynasty from here...

In Quebec The Train Go Boom!

"Shit has its own integrity"
Gore Vidal, The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal, p. 23

The Oracle of Ottawa thought he could take the summer off. The hit rates on blogs just tank in the summer, readers and most bloggers have a life after all. And to tell you the truth Dear Reader, the Oracle of Ottawa was getting tired of talking to himself. Blogging is a lot like being married to French girl, you talk to yourself a lot, and you learn to get used to it.

Christian Paradis brings industry to Lac-Megantic!

It was at a fine posh summer social engagement when the television came on just after the first smoked hamburgers were being delivered from the "smoker", when the Oracle of Ottawa first got ear of the massive tragedy of seventy tanker cars that somehow rolled down a hill of several kilometres in distance to derail and blow up inside of a town center at a place called Lac-Megantic Quebec in the middle of the night,early Saturday morning. It was Saturday evening when the Oracle of Ottawa caught the French CBC live coverage. They said it was a crude oil fire. What the hell is crude oil doing in a small town in Eastern Quebec?

Much to the Oracles utter surprise was the galling show up of the minions of the 'Harper Government' like this train wreck was a great photo - op! Denis "Blinkey" Lebel the minister of Transport made a very long appearance, no doubt the Liberals were practically cumming in their shorts as the awesome Minister made his own Liberal attack ads for the next general election. To the Oracle of Ottawa it was full 'Harper Government' surreal, as the Minister babbled about how safe rail transport is as the town behind him was going up in smoke! Only the 'Harper Government' could be so utterly insane. This was followed up by the Local MP for Lac-Megantic, who just happened to be Christian Paradis! The Minister of Industry for the 'Harper Government'! It all couldn't have happened to a nicer and more deserving guy, could it? It certainly appears that he brought much industry indeed to his home town....

This will make for very interesting Question Periods come September. One wonders if Minister "Blinkey" Lebel will still be of the view that it is not the Governments job to insure the safety of the general public by regulating private corporate transportation companies. The Oracle wonders how much fun we all have watching that come the fall.