Saturday, May 31, 2014

Guessing about Honesty

The upcoming dance at The Stolen Club makes a great case study.
  
Back when The Robbery first happened, Joe steered well away from the Cheating Swindlers Who Robbed his Colleague. Even though The Robbers repeatedly asked The Honest One to call for the Stolen Club, Honest Joe repeatedly yet nicely refused to accept Robbery Loot.

Obviously, that has now changed.  This Sunday, more than two years after The Robbery, Joe will, for the very first time, accept Stolen Robbery Loot to call for Lying Cheating Crooks.
 
What changed?  It's time for wild guesses.
 
Joe has been hanging on, for years, in the rapidly dwindling square dance market.  What would _you_ do if _your_ business declined ten percent a year, for a decade? Would you remain totally honest and ethical? Or would you relax your moral standards in order to earn a living?
 
Perhaps the term "Honest Joe" is a relic from the past.  Perhaps he realizes he can no longer make a living by remaining honest.  Now he must accept robbery loot just to make ends meet.  If this guess is correct, isn't it a shame whenever someone has to resort to crime just to stay afloat?
 
People who opt for wrongdoing often "justify" the deed in their own minds.  Perhaps Joe figures that the "statute of limitations" has run out, i.e. all robberies which happened two years ago are suddenly legit.
  
Perhaps Joe is just getting old.  (Aren't we all?).  Perhaps he can no longer remember that, two years ago, one of his so-called "friends" was brutally robbed, swindled, cheated and smeared out of a business which took years to build.
 
Perhaps Joe was once upright and moral, but now The Devil Hisself has Up And Possessed Joe.

We could easily keep guessing.  Guessing is fun.  It's the natural human reaction to a probing question.  Here's the question:  what on earth would make a formerly decent person (like Joe) politely refuse for years to participate in a robbery, and then all-of-a-sudden decide that it's perfectly okay to call for lying cheating swindlers who bald-face stole and smeared an innocent couple out of their life's work? 
 
Why was it wrong, for several years, to profit from robbery, but suddenly today it's okay?  Some questions just really make you wonder.

Here's the biggest question of all.  This isn't really about Joe.  It's about YOU.  _You_ already know that the Stolen Club exists only because of robbery.  _You_ are well aware that dirty rotten crooks cheated and slandered a hard-working couple out of their life's work.  In short, _you_ surely know that something is totally rotten and illegitimate about FunDancers. 

So ... why would you go?  Why don't you find an honest dance instead?  And once you find an honest dance event, invite Joe.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Do you have what it takes?

Johnny Preston is a full-time traveling square dance caller. He has no home club to call for. Instead, he goes out and harvests money from other clubs that other people built. He comes into town, calls a dance, collects a handsome fee and then moves on to the next harvest point.
   
But what if a club already has a caller booked on the date when Johnny Preston wants to breeze into town and seize someone's paycheck?  Does a person who organizes, builds, finances and grows a club get to call for his own group?  Or should a rightful club owner be required to forfeit his paycheck every time Johnny Preston happens to bop into town?
  
Think about a job that you get paid to do.  What if somebody happens to travel through your town one day?  What if this traveler wants to go to your workplace and do your job and collect your paycheck for that day? What would you do? How would you feel? 
  
Fortunately, in the square dance world, respected rules already exist to cover this situation.  Following time-honored traditions, the club owner offered to share his paycheck with Johnny Preston.  In other words, instead of letting Johnny Preston come in and outright steal a paycheck from a hard-working caller and his family, the club owner offered to split that paycheck with Johnny Preston.  (This kind of offer is actually common in the square dance world.)
 
But it is completely uncommon ... in fact it's totally unheard of ... for an out-of-town caller like Johnny Preston to come in and insist on outright grabbing someone's total paycheck.  Yet that's precisely what Johnny Preston did in May 2012 ... and it's pretty much what he does every day for a living.  The club owner tried for months to work out a satisfactory compromise yet Johnny Preston insisted that he has the right to come in and strong-arm outright bald-face steal a paycheck from another caller, any time he wants to.
 
Naturally, I spoke out against such wrongdoing. This protest had nothing to do with money.  It is only about doing what's right.  Any person who builds, finances, promotes and grows a club has earned the right to call for their own club.  It was completely wrong for Johnny Preston to come in and outright steal someone's paycheck in May 2012.  I tried for months to reach a compromise.  Ultimately, crooked swindling robbers at FunDancers decided to go behind my back and collude with Johnny Preston and commit a robbery.
 
The robbers stole everything I owned.  They stole my paycheck for that day.  When I continued to protest about how wrong it all was, the swindling cheaters ran a successful smear campaign.  They stole my club. They stole thousands of dollars that the deadbeat club still owes to this day.  They stole my entire life's work.  I lost thousands of so-called "friends" (who, as it ends up, are all totally fake anyway, so it's not a big loss).
  
Although I lost, big-time, by speaking out against crime and robbery, I actually gained something of great value that money cannot buy.  I gained the honor of refusing to participate in theft. I gained the knowledge that I will not tolerate cheating swindling nasty rotten wrongdoers.  I gained the pride that comes from choosing right over wrong.
  
Do you have that same pride?  You do have a choice.  You can go dance to Johnny Preston.  If you do that, you participate in, endorse and profit from strong-arm robbery and out-right theft.  Or you can do the right thing instead.  You can refuse to participate in wrongdoing.
  
Do you have what it takes to Do The Right Thing?

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Five Ingredients

To outright bald-face steal a square dance club, you need five key ingredients:
  1. A club worth stealing. Most clubs nowadays are so small and piddly that it's not worth the bother to steal them. So ... find yourself a strong club into which someone invested thousands of dollars. Wait until it grows into the biggest club in town, then steal it. Go big or go home. Since you're gonna rob someone anyway, make it worth your while.

  2. A club owner who goes out of town. Learn how it's done, from the experienced swindlers at FunDancers. It's much easier to rob someone while they're away.

  3. Callers willing to accept robbery loot to call for cheating lying swindling deadbeats who robbed one of their so-called "colleagues". Square dancing is "friendship set to music" ... as long as the definition of "friendship" is "I'm your friend, I'm always there, and whenever someone robs you, I'll be there to grab as much loot as I can".

  4. Dancers willing to endorse and participate in your criminal illusion that you "improved square dancing" by cheating a hardworking innocent couple out of their life's work. Here's a helpful hint, if you really want to improve square dancing: next time, target a victim who will take a robbin' silently. It's much easier to get away with robbery when your crime victim is silent. Too bad you didn't know that in advance.

  5. Gossips and name-smearers who love to start and spread rumors. Just be careful. If you enjoy the company of gossips and rumor-mongers, chances are good that you might become the target of their next smear campaign. Not "if ... " but "when ... " it happens, look on the bright side: you probably deserve it.
So there you have it: the five key ingredients for any square dance robbery. Luckily for you, all five key ingredients are in abundance at FunDancers in Schertz. If you enjoy participating in robbery, swindling, cheating and total sheer utter wrongness, look no further. You found all those rotten things, and more, at FunDancers in Schertz.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

What is a Square Dance Caller?

In 2004 I set up a website for the entire Rio Grande Valley of Texas.  It cost me hundreds of hours in time and hundreds of dollars of my own money to get the site up and running.  The site was set up as a public service for the square dance community. When I left that region in 2009, I outright gave the website to the couple who will call tomorrow at FunDancers.
 
In early 2012, I enhanced the website so that it can make money by selling ads. This took hundreds of additional hours of time. After I set up the ad program, I showed them exactly how to go out and sell ads. I personally loaded all the ads into the system and showed them how to mail out invoices and get paid.

We agreed to split the income.  Actually, a 50-50 split right down the middle would have been a totally fair deal.  However they negotiated me down to only a 20% share (because I had a real job and they didn't).

So, let's recap.  I came up with the idea.  I set up the website. I put in hundreds of hours of time, absolutely free, and hundreds of dollars of my own money just to get the site running. I set up the advertising program. I showed them exactly how to make it all work. 

They are to get 80% while I only get 20%.  This surely sounds like an extremely generous deal (for them).

Whenever you talk about how square dancing is "friendship", what do you think the word "friendship" means? Perhaps it means "friends" will do all the work and then just outright give someone a money-making website in exchange for only 20% of the action.  Yep, square dancing is all about "friendship", especially when you have "friends" you can use.

Anyway, we made a deal.  They get 80 percent, I get 20.

Except ... they paid me exactly one time ... the very first month the program was running. They never paid a dime after that.  Interestingly, that same month (April 2012) was when Ed Wedig and the Wheatleys brutally, senselessly and criminally robbed, swindled, cheated and smeared me and my innocent spouse out of the square dance business which took us a lifetime to build.

Fast forward to today.  Today, ads still run on the Rio Grande Valley website which I built.  Ad money still rolls in every month.  I still came up with the idea, did all the work, financed the project out of my own pocket, set up everything and showed them how to use it. Everything today is going exactly to plan  ... except  ... I've been cheated out of my share of the deal for over two years now.

Do the math.  Tomorrow's caller has outright cheated me out of nearly $3000. That's in addition to approximately $35,000 which I was directly and/or indirectly swindled out of by Ed Wedig and the Wheatleys when they outright strong-arm robbed me and my wife.

So, let's recap.  What kind of person would cheat a "friend" out of thousands of dollars? Well, that's the kind of person who calls square dances today and/or is a leader in such a "friendly" activity.

To be fair, it's not an isolated problem.  Almost all "prominent" square dance callers today are lying, cheating, back-stabbing, money-grabbing, swindling, robbing, immoral, duty-shirking bill-dodgers.  Let's be honest. Square dancing is way down.  Square dance callers nowadays, if they want to survive, must lie and cheat and swindle ... just to get by.  It's almost impossible to start a new square dance club.  A much better way is to wait until someone else starts a club and then steal it from them.

So whenever you talk about how square dancing is "friendship", just remember that if you are willing to do all the work and put up all the time and money only to get cheated out of all that you built, then you can be a true loyal "friend" to a square dance leader.  But if you are not willing to silently tolerate being a crime victim, then suddenly you're labeled as "crazy" or "unfriendly", etc.

If it's "crazy" to speak out against robbery and cheating, then so be it. Your personal opinion of someone's mental health does not change the unalterable fact that it's just flat wrong to rob, swindle and cheat other people.  Additionally, this same person who rooked me out of my share of advertising revenue (by pocketing the entire amount instead of paying the agreed-upon split) has come in to Schertz many times and helped himself to robbery loot.  When my club and my money and my business was outright bald-face stolen from me, this same "friend" has profited handsomely.  He comes in and scoops up fistfuls of robbery loot, as much and as often as he can, quickly, before it all runs out.

That's what it takes, nowadays, to be a successful square dance caller.  You must be willing to rob and cheat others if you want to survive.  You must totally steep yourself in absolute no-good rottenness.

On Sunday you can dance to a deadbeat who robs his friends, doesn't honor his agreements and cheats his colleagues.  You can dance at a club which was strong-arm bald-face stolen and swindled by deadbeat robbers, name-smearers and cheaters.  You can reward dastardly immoral people who prosper from horrible illegal activities. 

If you dance at Fundancers, you send a message that it's perfectly okay to rob, swindle, cheat and steal. Is that the message you really want to send?

Or ... you can choose do to the right thing instead.  You can avoid robbers.  You can find a good wholesome activity to do.  It really isn't hard to find some other activity which does not require you to reward robbing cheating swindling scumbags.  It's your choice.  You can endorse and validate criminal robbing cheating bandits.  Or you can do the right thing by avoiding wrongdoing.  Which choice will you make, and what message does it send?