Oh, Bama! or With Strings Attached

Here were the Obamas visitimg the Queen of England. I am sure everything was mutually pleasant and properly cordial, but where was the noblesse oblige? Even after the rumblings brought about by handing off a old bag of used DVDs (and mind you regionally-coded DVDs that he couldn't even watch) as a gift to PM Gordon Brown after his first official visit, Obama seemed to learn no bettter. Michelle, despite how chummy she got with the Queen later, basically threw Prince Phillip under a bus in this photograph. And then Barack presented the Elizbeth II with an Ipod of his speeches, plus footage from her royal visit to America from 2007. He excused himself saying Her Majesty wanted these videos--but I am pretty sure the Queen has the savvy to pirate this herself. She was, after all, the first head of state to send an e-mail, in 1976. It was a moment, harking back to the Bush administration, when I was moved to ask, didn't his advisors say something. Maybe that's not the best idea, or simply shut up. At least when George W. gave Vladimir Putin those shit-kicking cowboy boots, at least that was meanful. I guess we can't have nice things. And now the US administration can't even dole out billions of dollars to rescue private corporations without exacting its executive first-born.

Dey-o!

As the nations of the G-20 meet in the Docklands, there are whispers are outright shrill cries for all sorts of dramatic changes to the world economy. One idea advanced in particular is for a new single world reserve currency to surplant the US dollar. Even though this fiat currency that some are calling the dey (dollar-euro-yen) is just as fictional as gold-pressed latinum, certain Armageddonists are calling this the latest sign of the beast--just like they did for machine readable bar-codes twenty years earlier. Jeez--these kids today and their y2k! Surely this bit of financial handiwork must be the tool of the devil--an invitation for us all to prosper or to suffer together. A universal currency, aside from edging out the usurers and market-speculators, is a bad idea, like pouring all one's water into a wide but shallow pan--the slightest wave and rumble is magnified and the the water spills over the edge. China and Russia, both advocates of the dey, are, at the same time, proponents of a return to the gold standard--that is, saying that money has value besides the fact that the respective governments say so, pixie dust and fools' gold, and having treasuries redeemable in some shitty old nuggets.

Коробе́йники

With moving day more than a month away, I feel I can take my time with the process and first repackage the rubbish that I've lugged across the earth, the what's out of sight or seasonal, before taking down any thing that is part of the landscape. So things looked untouched, unless one were to see the dozen boxes stacked in the extra bedroom and check in emptied drawers. Arranging objects in a safe way, wrapped in paper and bubble-wrap and cushioned with the odd pair of winter socks, sometimes I hum the Tetris tune in my head and think of ways to bettr place and rotate shapes. What would fit snuggly between the uranium glass platter and Villeroy-and-Boch antique porcelain mannequin arm? And then sometimes I take something from the visible population of the house. The amber hedgehog paper-weigt--or in this case, the little tiki idol with mother-of-pearl eyes and the Chinese Wise-Mens? Once safely packed, believe it or not, I notice thier absenses right away. One wouldn't think I would be so sentimental and bothered, having moved so many times in my life, in jobs, and with such antique, ancient things that have so far managed to survive and are not fated to crumble at my hand.

Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp sh'Bomp Bomp, who put the Ant in Antananarivo?

I realize that there are more serious goings-on with the Malagasy people, but I am an academic widow this week with H devoted to intense study and preparation--I am missing H very much--but I want to know what it is about Madagascar that puts them at liberty to have such fun and lyrical names. President Ravalomanana was deposed in a military coup and ceded control to a former DJ. Who was that man? I'd like to shake his hand. He made my baby fall in love with me.

play of the day

Within the past few days, Sarkosy passed an initiative through Parliment with the intent that France re-join NATO in full. Four decades ago, de Gaulle withdrew from the treaty in kind, in part, that French soverignity no be in thrall to a foreign conglomate, feeling that the Soviets were entitled to a position other than adversarial in Weltpolitik and to keep open negotiations in case the Iron Curtain were to seep over in neighbouring West Germany. I can't get a read on Sarkosy's motivations for this change. Will France quarter a standing-army of Americans, like German, Italy and BeNeLux? Perhaps it is a quirk of timing that Russia is just now announcing its intention to revamp its military forces. That entity called NATO has always been antigonistic for eastern parts, and how is one to say whether Russia is bracing itself for some coming-skirmish over natural resources or girding itself for another Cold War?

This St. Patrick's Day--No one is more Irish than Barack O'Bama

So we should cease and detest in talking down the world economy? I am all for a hopeful note--cheer up world, it may never happen--but just because US president Obama said that the crisis is called off, that the situation is not as bad as it seems, does not mean that one ought re-join that orgy as if there were a morning-after pill for all contingencies. Now it seems almost a little offense, so yesterday, that the media are still taking about recession now having been banished. the Americans have a taste for phony crises, and there is just as much of a craving for the hollow reassurance. As much as I myself was a true believer, I must admit that the US has a penchant for electing good cheerleaders. With cursorary and short-lived attention, they may hope that flowers would be blooming, like with the groundhog superstition, and solve the economy, health care and housing in one blow. Not enough care paid to reform is much more dangerous in the long view, promoting unregulating policies that have no sense of good governance. All in all, maybe it's a good sign thatI can muster the wherewithal to criticize the US president. Better a better man.