the hunting of the snark or the barrister’s dream and the banker’s fate

Perhaps the embattled EU and currency alliance needs the rare and elusive Eurocorn for a mascot, a symbolic protagonist to rally against the kingmaker creditors and the formless monsters of debt and want.

pedigree pelecanus

There was a happy and romantic friend waiting to abush me in the shower for Valentine's Day when I got home. 

versöhnen u. abkindern

According to the Passauer Neue Presse (DE), there is a small faction in the CSU (the Christian Socialist Union) proposing to shore up the financial landscape of health- and nursing care insurance, facing an aging and dwindling population in Germany, by levying a special income tax against the childless (Kinderlose).

The group's speaker and chief advocate suggests that adults over the age of twenty-five should be made to contribute 1% of their income to support this fund, reduced to a half for the first child and to zero for every child thereafter. I am not sure what to make of this plan, which would need to overcome the hurdles of a Bundestag vote, legal scrutiny and public opinion. I don't know if it is equitable to exact a nominal, punitive sum from individuals who are not backfilling, putting someone in the wings, to continue paying into the pool of funds that make up pensions and insurance programmes, and apparently, aside from Kindergeld, there is already a fractional surcharge built into nursing-care policies for the childless--and such a plan would have to ultimately face the hurdles of the past as well. Incentive initiatives, like the Marriage Credit (Darlehen) (DE/EN) of the 1930s and 1940s and continued under the DDR for the promotion of families and a strong populace, of the past approached social engineering from the opposite direction. Newly-weds were extended lines of credits, loans, which were progressively forgiven as the couple had children. This scheme of debt jubilee--pardoning, discharging--was referred to as abkindern. I suppose that eventually no plan of action is off limits when it comes to reconciling (versöhnen) disparities between generations and the flow of support between children and parents.

it’s only a paper moon

Some months ago, I heard some discussion about a crowd-sourced, independent science-fiction feature with the premise that during the final days of World War II in Europe, remnants of the government of Nazi Germany retreat to the dark side of the Moon, and from that lunar base, study world developments and regroup to found a Fourth Reich. The Moon and exploration, cinematically, has been taking a beating lately, what with the Transformers' Movie and the cover-up depiction of the missions, general lunar skepticism, and now this.  Iron Sky, nonetheless, sounds fantastic, and I was not following at first but the movie has premiered at the Berlinale film festival, with audiences and critics indulging in the guilty pleasures of this trashy fun. Irreverent, the movie reminds me of Mel Brooke's The Producers, and shows that (maybe trampling on good taste and the realities of war) this era continues to be inexhaustible. There are several theatrical trailers out there, but I really like this one, featured on Boing Boing, because it pokes fun at itself and the ridiculousness of the idea, and I agree that an invasion of space Nazis from the Moon would be a natural consequence of electing Sarah Palin as president of the United States.

songbird

It was very tragic and shocking news to learn of Whitney Houston's (DE/EN) passing. Her superlative lists of accolades and firsts, pioneering within the music industry, will certainly demand time and appreciation to recount and celebrate, but she has other important legacies in her charity and activism--for instance against apartheid in South Africa, which did not end so very long ago. Of course her talent resounded year in and year out but the timing was disconcerting and regrettable on a personal level, what with presentations and activities marking Black History Month, with the theme black women in history.

Her image was in the montages of fame and achievement with many others. I always found these events interesting, inspiring and necessary--but I found myself a little uncomfortable being made acutely aware that for this month, all these politicians, professionals, educators, entertains were different. Then I realized that it was all well and good that I was not seeing the colour of people's skin but that did not mean that the colour-blindness was universal nor did it ease the struggles that all people with any kind of otherness are facing. I guess no individual or group should be so arrogant as to think that they are the only audience, intended or otherwise. Perhaps that too was a part of Whitney Houston's accomplishments, not that she achieved fame despite or because of her heritage and not that her success was accepted despite or because of the same reasons--neither she nor her audience ever minced her roots and her talents were never pigeon-holed as one typified genre or another. For the one cinematic role that she is remembered for, in The Body-Guard with Kevin Costner, no mention was ever made that the characters shared an inter-racial love interest.  Her vocal abilities and personality carried through her pop mainstay, and also managed to famously decompartmentalize gospel and patriotic music in her career. We'll miss you, Whitney.

tag or bridges and islands

Taking a walk through town, I happened on this stretch of wall by the school campus that was decorated along its length with stencil graffiti. These were the usual icons and statements that one sees propagated everywhere, but what caught my eye first was the attempt to correct a reverse application (islands are the solid, outline areas of a stencil, and the straits that form letters and other details are termed bridges), which I guess is really impossible in the rush of spraying.

Then I noticed that one was not advised to keep warm by burning the rich, rather by burning them out. I guess that this wall has been a canvas for all sorts of messages, and I think experimenting with stenciling has produced, maybe accidentally, a more nuanced declaration.