sticky fingers or mother’s little helper

Not that we only make store-bought pizzas, but this little spoon rest that my sister sent me as a gift would come in handy then too. When not in use (and I’m one to clutch on to something rather than put it down in some place where it might be in the way or make a mess) I could hold it up to my mouth and sing Brown Sugar and She’s so Cold or “I’ll never be your pizza burning.”

paris? ORLY?

Once upon a time, some futurists were projecting that the urban landscaping to come would mirror an airport terminal, ease of access and, crowd control, logistically sound with a mixed infrastructure to create employment opportunities and provide all conceivable services. In civil terms, people would be engineering the airport as the destination.
I don’t know if this is the current forecast and iIt does sound intriguing and efficient to design and zone new municipalities as radiating out from new hubs. I wonder, however, about the long and less than surgical extraction of the great old city airports, like Tempelhof in Berlin, replaced by a project (on the receding curb) removed to the countryside and only connected to its namesake by sprawl.
There seems to be more off-putting, which may not be such a bad thing, considering some of the apocalyptic visions of past futurists of unbroken pavements of highway and eternal journals with no end that fortunately were not wholly accurate.  Perhaps such configurations will suit far-off colonies, but there does not seem to be many cities willing to give up their character for the sake of an orderly layout, nor virgin lands to jet off to. The planning and proximity of old cores of communities, with their various channels and rivulets, have gotten significantly more crowded but I think human-sized strides and footprints do a pretty good job of demarcation.

dice, deed and deck or weal of fortune

It is an interesting irony and twist of commerce that one of the most popular and enduring board games, Monopoly, was originally meant to be stark warning against allowing land and real estate (utilities and transport too) to be concentrated, hoarded in the hands of the few.

Rather than encouraging accumulation and acquisition as a life-skill, the inventor of The Landlord’s Game, a brilliant reproduction shared by a Happy Mutant on the wonderful Boing Boing, was hoping to indoctrinate young people and families in the economic philosophies of Henry George (DE), who was an advocate for business and commercial enterprise (in so far as it was something that one built oneself) but believed that natural resources and land ought to be in the hands of the public, and the property held privately, by exception, ought to be taxed at a high rate. George did not want the government to nationalize assets or limit ownership but thought a progressive tax, on the landed gentry, could help pay for the public weal and work to discourage such amassing of wealth (via rents rather than industry) in the hands of the few, privileged and to the manor born. Just as the original was not propaganda for socialism, the familiar modern inspiration and all its variations are ruthless games of capitalism and probably still illustrates the dangers of high-rent districts and slumlords and an anti-competitive landscape.

eenie meanie or ένας μια ενα

Some time ago, I recall reading a broad overview (not disjointed but just non-sequitur and sparse explanation, like a freak-show of strange foreign customs) on Christmas traditions. According to the article, some Greek households leave a colander out on the doorstep (unlike stockings hung over a heath or a boot on Sankt Nikolas Tag in Germany for gifts) to confound mischievous spirits and keep them from entering the home.

Like our friend from Sesame Street, Count von Count (Graf Zahl), imps and demons have a condition called arithmomania, the irresistible compulsion to count things and would be drawn to counting out the holes on the strainer. Incidentally, vampires in general tend to be distracted by disarray and would stop to fully account for a tossed handful of rice grains or something similar, should one need a second to escape from one. Did the Count’s character, I wonder, come from his mild version of the disorder or vice-versâ? Because of the demon’s infernal nature, however, it would only manage to count one, two before being cast back on the number three—three being the holy trinity. The spirit could rematerialize and try again but never make it past three. It’s a bit early (and maybe a bit too exotic) for Christmas but I think it might be a nice and maybe more effective gesture of solidarity for the Greek people to help them through these trying times (after all, the people of Iceland ousted their corrupt politicians by banging pots and pans), which none of us may be so charmed as to avoid.

forward

I heartily congratulate the American people and Barack Obama on his re-election. After debate, treatment, retouching and legislative gridlock, there would be more than a sliver of daylight’s difference in the outcomes for social programmes and diplomacy between him and his challenger. 

I believe, moreover, the opposition’s biggest hurdle (that they set up themselves as a stumbling block) was the inability—in fact and in argument, to convince voters that they were interested in being any more than the president of the 1%, the 99%, the 47% or the 53%, no matter how one cuts it, a whole swath of dissenters and people with different priorities and approaches would be disenfranchised. Sympathy and reform are not divisive, and while first terms are not dress-rehearsals, time, patience and experimentation are necessary to see innovation through, especially in the annals of government. Maybe not every hope and help was able to roll out after that carwash of debate, treatment, brinksmanship and infighting perfectly and true to the original vision and intent, and many decried the frustration and impositions of State as execution settled, but I think that at bottom inclusiveness proved to be an invitation to join in those aspirations and willingness to brave new directions, with open eyes and full knowledge that the roadblock of one person can become the safeguard of another. There is unfinished business to attend to.

droide astromeccanico

heebee jeebees

In a somewhat formulaic but still nightmare inducing and thought-provoking tradition of fake documentaries, in the spirit of the Blair Witch Project and revisited with the series Paranormal Activity, the same creative team has unleashed another lurid and worrisome monster in The Bay, apparently created out of a potion of pollution, agricultural run-off, steroids and nuclear waste. The inspiration, though not as aggressive in reality (though that maybe owing to the steroids and mutations), for these insidious and alien creatures, however, is not far removed from its portrayal.

An isopod (Asseln) is a kind of primitive crustacean with seven pairs of legs, and the most well-known representative of this family is probably the roly-poly, the pillbug (Kellerassel) but many other live in the water and have adopted scary, parasitic lifestyles. One species can grow to a half a meter in length and scuttles about on the cold, dark ocean floor like an insectoid tank, but the really terrifying one that makes the skin crawl (and the subject of the movie with some cross-overs) is a singular variety called Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating louse. A nymph invades the host fish, usually a Snapper (Barsch) through its gills, before latching onto the tip of its tongue. Growing to a substantial size, eventually the fish's tongue atrophies and falls off and the parasite then acts as a regular tongue. I do not quite buy the idea that the fish just has some ersatz, prosthetic tongue now and no further damage is done to the host, nor to people.  These creatures have an even more bizarre life-cycle, progressing to males from hermaphrodites when attached to the gills and growing into females in the fish's mouth.  True horror is knowing what is out there in nature and its scavenging, resourceful inventions.

ojos bien cerrados or pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

There a perfect cover for the meeting of finance ministers and reserve bank chiefs of the G20 nations going on in Mexico. One wonders about the timing of such things and though the meeting seems kind of formal and anodyne, one still cannot quite shake the feeling that important decisions are being vetted—the kind that governments cannot rely on democracy and openness to choose wisely. There is no rudeness, nor strategic advantage, I think, in not waiting for the outcome of the US elections, even though neither of these events went unplanned or were scheduled in a vacuum.

I fear that the results will be hotly contested and unknown for weeks, but regardless of the conclusion and attendant consequences, the US president will be accedes to the same fiscal situation. Most of the discussion in Mexico seems to be economic-boilerplate, not choking off near-term growth by too great a focus on austerity and discipline, deferring the savings and necessary restructuring for later, all which might seem a rather insignificant message to come out of the gathering of so much talent, power and influence ten-thousand kilometers away (for the EU representatives) but bureaucracy is often like that.

In as much as some events might like to have the spotlight stolen from, maybe this conference also stands for the scales that fell away from one’s eyes in another regard (scales—that phrase has been haunting me throughout the campaign, an obscure and automatic saying like, “As I lay dying, the woman with the dog’s eyes would not close my eyes as I descend into the underworld”): the chaos the whole of the banking and financial system has wrought. Maybe the illusion is dispelled that covered up the cycle of boom and bust that is a dissonance and a disconnect from the real economy and only plays policy into the hands of money-managers. The allure and ease, stoked by private concerns, keep central banks and ministers distracted from the real charges and warrants. The charade crested in 2008 and left many disillusioned but so long as there is money to be made off of money, some will try to keep up this effluvious momentum. Maybe such overshadowed events, spared some attention through timing, are acknowledgments that people are weary of talk without protection, calls for reform and toning down the rhetoric of ascetics, and efforts and assessments to bridge disorder best not receive top-billing so we’re not all heir to this fiscal froth.