Go2Go2Go2
^{Travel Exhortations by Ric Carter}

DON'T WANNA LIVE LIKE A REFUGEE:
  Journey Into A Better Life

The economic situation at home really really sucks. Maybe the political-religious-ethnic-social situations suck also, but economics usually trumps those other factors, which are just the icing on the miserable cake. Hey, when was the last time you even *saw* a cake or icing, let alone tasted them? But anyway, you decide you MUST make a better life, for yourself and your family and friends and lawyers and tax collectors and the other leeches that parasitize depend on you.

Since you can't find that better life at home, you decide to look for it somewhere else. Congratulations! You are now an Economic Refugee aka Economic Migrant. (See DON'T JUST MOVE - MIGRATE! for more.) A whole new world is now open for you! Here's a quick guide to how that world works.

Migrants-Refugees can be INTERNAL or EXTERNAL.

# INTERNAL Migrants are often rural poor who head to large cities looking for jobs, either turning those cities into industrial powerhouses or vast collections of noxious slums, desperate shanty­towns, filthy ghettoes etc. Or both. Or they might be semi-skilled industrial workers in an area where the factories have shut down, the jobs migrated overseas to nations where labor can be had for a fraction of the domestic rate.

# EXTERNAL Migrants cross international borders. Such border crossings may require documents and/or bribery as well as many attempts, supreme stealth, great personal risk to life and limb, etc. The refugees may be heading from a land of total impoverishment to a less wretched place offering at least meagre wages to some, or may be reaching for the big prize: one of the G7 industrialized countries. If this is you, you may find yourself climbing razor-wire fences, swiffing fortified rivers or through drainage ditches and sewers, traversing icy mountains, steaming deserts and swamps, crossing minefields and free-fire zones, etc. Good luck.

# PASSPORTS or similar documents are often required to legally cross international borders. Some nations also require internal passports or other documents for moving about within your own country. Be sure to bribe the right people. What, you haven't the money for a bribe? Then steal it. Or just sneak across the border(s) and hope for the best.

The refugee-migrant journeying to a better life needs to be suitably dressed. You likely won't have access to the LL Bean or Lands End or other travel-adventure-clothing catalogs, so make do with whatever is at hand. For the journey itself you'll want sturdy shoes or boots or maybe swim fins or snowshoes. You'll want garb appropriate for the environment — for burning heat or cutting cold, for spiny deserts or hurricanes or ice floes. And once you reach your destination, you'll need local work clothes so you can blend in with the populace. These can be stolen from where they hang out to dry.

At your destination, you can expect to live in abject misery only slightly better than the hellhole you left. Don't be surprised by squalid, overcrowded housing, like 20 people living together in a small room. You may find yourself in desperate competition for filthy, degrading work. If female, you may find yourself pressed into sexual or other slavery — a barricaded sweatshop is about the best you can hope for. If a child, you'll be at work and not in school, and you might be a sex-slave too. If your documents are questionable, there are those who will inform on you (for a small reward), whense you are deported back to your unspeakable homeland.

But you might whine, "I don't want to live like this! I came here for a better life, to live with human dignity, to get my share of the first-world's plunder!" Such goals *are* attainable — you need only possess the brains, the will, the stalwart-ruthless character, and the divine good fortune necessary to reach these dreams.

Here are some recipes for success:

# Go into business. Since you have no resources, you must borrow heavily, possibly staking your family as collatoral. The more enterprising individual will steal, blackmail, hijack, kill, do whatever it takes to gain the initial capital. Guard your capital well. If you're broke, you're nothing.

# Join a gang. Gangsters, while they live, have nearly unlimited access to weapons, drugs, sex, power, and money. The enterprising and luck individual will soon bloodily work their way to the top of a criminal organization. You may eventually be able to sponsor your children, if any, for top political offices.

# Be a protogé. Attach yourself to someone (of your community or otherwise) who is successful in politics, religion, the arts or athletics or other entertainments, etc. As a flunky or aide or best buddy or disciple, you can gain status and wealth just by being there. You can even learn the "tricks of the trade" and plot to take over your boss's position. This is quite common in religion and politics, and quite possible in the arts, especially "ethnic music" and television.

# Trade on sex. Persistent sex-workers and their managers have nearly unlimited opportunities for success due to the high turnover rates in this industry. While managers tend to start small and acquire larger domains over time until they are shot, good sex-workers tend to start at the top and work their way downwards. hus the key to success is to save a large portion of your savings (instead of blowing everything on drugs), get out while you are still ambulatory, and go into the arts or literature, capitalizing on your experiences.

# Join the military. If eligible in your destination state, you may find a military stint or career to be the surest route to stability, status, and citizenship. Many nations employ foreign flunkies as armed enforcers. You'll learn valuable skills that will serve you well, either on the tough streets of your new home, or if you ever return to your old homeland bent on overthrowing the brutal regime and installing your own.

Of course, your situation may be rather different. You might already be a peron of some educational-professional-public attainment, and you're merely moving to a more developed nation to increase your rewards. In this case you can forget about all the previously mentioned grubbiness and concentrate instead on corporate-scholastic infighting, judicious ass-licking, minimizing your accent, and maximizing your recreational-sexual-obsessional opportunities. You may even gain one or more protogés (see above). Watch them very carefully.

So you see, unless you are among the 99.9% of schlubs, losers and hosers who migrate futilely for a better life that never materializes, you needn't "live like a refugee." You have possibilities. You have hopes. You have a 12" penis and/or 48" tits and/or a 185 IQ. You can do anything. Have a nice trip.

WORK AS YOU GO:
  It's Not A Working Vacation, Just An Extended Commute

You like to travel. You want to travel. You NEED to travel. But you're not independently wealthy, nor have you assets stashed away to sustain you for any period of time, nor are you on remittance (bribed to stay away from somewhere else). How can you feed your wanderlust AND your gut, your emotional AND physical needs?

You've already considered restricting your journeys to just those impoverished lands where your meagre resources are adequate for sustenance for a while, but somehow you are put off by the starvation, political instability, religious-civil wars, and hatred of foreigners. So you've drawn an arbitrary line — you'll stick to parts of the world where the average life span is 50 years or more. But that costs money. You're no good at robbery (your accent ios incomprehensible) so you'll have to work. Bother.

Many forms of employment are open to foreigners around the 'civilized' world. Most of them rather suck. One time-honored exception is to set yourself up as a language teacher. (This is no longer an option for Yanks in Western Europe, where English widely taught in public schools. Try elsewhere.) Even better is a position as a journalist or columnist, either amusing locals with the quirks of your honeland, or advising emigrés of the ominous nature of their adopted country. Other high-status positions include business-cultural-military advisor, exotic artist or entertainer or pimp, or assassin.

Lower on the scale, you'll find much scheiss-werk. Manual labor doesn't pay much and there's always someone willing to degrade and exhaust and destroy themselves for less money. If you actually know anything and are willing to submit yourself to the critical appraisal of your fellow language speakers, you could try being a tour guide, although locals may physically punish you for infringing on their guild. The same goes for peddling or begging or singing on the street. You could drive a taxi, again facing the guild problem. You could try smuggling, but you'd better be good at it. You could set up a drug lab. Or prostitute yourself. Or become a police informer.

Your best bet is to pre-arrange work that will pay your way as you journey. A travel writer, business agent, missionary, military invader, shcolarly researcher, terrorist, NGO worker, spy, propagandist, circus clown, etc, can usually be assured of funds. Beware of signing up for 'volunteer' positions that require you to actually pay for the privelege of performing squat-n-grunt work.

You may have absolutely no professional or intellectual skills. You'll end up in the ranks of migrant agricultural workers, maritime pirates, itinerant beggers, vagrant political activists, roving gamblers, and others who expect to make a few bucks and then return home. These are uncomfortable circumstances but you may be able to do no better.

However you find yourself, no matter how degraded and demoralized you become, you can always cheer yourself up by adopting the right attitude. (See TRAVEL ATTITUDES for more.) Tell yourself that you are improving yourself physically and/or morally, that you are learning new languages and customs, that you are gathering material for future books. Tell yourself that it's not a lifelong commitment to a miserable career, just a long-cycle commute. Tell yourself that there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, that there's a pie in the sky when you die, that your visible and/or invisible friends really love you, that you're earning brownie points for your next incarnation, that your in your miserable position because you were MEANT to be there. Promise yourself that you'll go home soon. Promise her love but give her twelve inches — oops, that's a different topic. Good luck.

TRAVEL FOR MODERN PIRATES:
  Yo Ho Ho and a Jug of Pennzoil

Back in Ye Goode Olde Dayse, piracy was fairly easy and straight­forward. It was a maritime endeavour. You decided to go pirate. You acquired a ship, a crew of black-hearted knaves, some cannon and cutlasses, a black flag. You lurked around shipping lanes, awaiting some unescorted slow fat merchant scow. Sighting a target, you hoisted your huge sails and/or whipped your oarsmen into a lather and sped up to your victim. A couple of accurate cannonades and they were dismasted, or a spray of grapeshot or arrows and their oarsmen were disabled, or you just went ahead and rammed the sucker. Close in, and your navvies were jumping aboard, swinging swords, throwing knives, tossing bodies overboard, etc.

Pretty soon, the prize was yours. There may have been some nobles to ransom, some women and/or cabin boys to rape, some strong guys to either join your crew or sell into slavery. TAKE THE TREASURE AND RUN — no problem. No radios to call for help. No bothersome radar or satellite surveillance or submarines to worry about.

All that has changed. Those fat merchants are still mostly unescorted but now they're armed with electronics and can call in speedy retribution. What to do?

You've got to change your strategies, your tactics, and your mode of travel. You've got to be as modern as your targets. You've got to evolve. Evolve or die, that's how it works.

* MARITIME PIRACY: Forget about big ships. Concentrate on either small cargo carriers or large private pleasure craft. For about just attacking. You need to be much more subtle. Infiltrate the crew, make the attack an inside job. You'll probably want your own fast boat for offloading; then you can scuttle the victim, sink the evidence, after the traditional looting and raping and pillaging etc. Or you could run off with you prize, repaint it and sell it to some sucker who'll think they're getting a real bargain.

* AIR PIRACY: Similar to the maritime sort. Modern airplanes are built to resist violent takeovers, so crew infiltration is your best bet. Just make sure that you have enough fuel to land someplace inconspicuous.

* HIGHWAY PIRACY: You'll want to target *certain* big trucks. You'll need to know just which truck carries just which cargo, or else you'll end up with a shitload of fresh garlic. Modern semi-tractor-trailer rigs have satellite links, so even if the driver works for you, make sure the piracy takes place at an expected stop. The trailer may be sat-linked also, so don't just run off with it — offload quickly into another vehicle. Raping and pillaging aren't likely to be on your list of priorities, but you can be flexible here. It's hard to scuttle a big rig unless you're near a steep boat ramp in a murky lake.

* PERSONAL PIRACY: You can't go wrong now with a traditional carjacking. One advantage is that you needn't go to the expense and risk of using your own vehicle, since you're about to acquire one. There's a value-added bonus if you've selected a ransomable target. As above, raping and pillaging and looting are always options. NOTE: New GPS and RFID technologies may soon render this form of piracy obsolete.

* SOFTWARE PIRACY: This is misnamed. Copying unprotectable intellectual products just doesn't qualify for the label 'piracy' except to corrupt corporate lawyers whose clients can't figure out viable marketing structures. Piracy? No looting, raping, pillaging, scuttling, bloodshed is involved. An intellectual 'pirate' need hardly travel at all, except to maybe walk or ride to some WiFi hotspot to effect their downloads. What's the fucker gonna sing? YO HO HO AND A LITER OF JOLT COLA ?!?!?!?!? Yeah, sure.

All these forms of piracy are already on the verge of obsolescence. The future will see the piracy of genes, brains, political-religious-economic theories, and entire planets. Make that planet walk the plank! Argh, shiver me timbers...

NOTE: Forget Johnny Depp. Pirates were never cute. They were and are filthy scum, hostis humani generis, enemies of humanity, the same as modern terrorists. Find out how to eradicate them: click here.