Erin Go Braugh

H and I have just returned from another adventure--this time in the south-western corner of Ireland. We had a great time, rumbling through this beautiful countryside. We were sold on some little villages spewing torrents of hot folk music into the crisp sea air, but learnt that many things are not on offer "off-season." No matter--we still had a great time and, as I told H, surely someone would write a folk song lauding his fearless driving skills and incredible brillance as "a sheep-dodger." I went on to narrate a lot of our activities in Irish folk song form, mostly to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." We had great fun--craic is the word for it, I learned, pronounced crack, and a very positive-proof for the adages about budget airlines and surprising landscapes, all that's out there to discover.

Do not google this

HP Lovecraft once wrote, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age." Maybe we are becoming too inter-connected, too smart for our own safety, peeking at the whole tawdry, moth-biten tapestry.

Rank Hypocrisy

Too bad she's a Replicant--and doesn't even realize it herself... An independent panel apparently found the then governor guilty of abuse of power for pressing the dismissal of a family member appointed to a state office. When voted into the state stewardship, she was vetted with this perogative, since the participants in this family-drama, nepotism, were elevated and brought down by a whim. Abuse of power sounds like a heady accusation but it won't stick. It's rank hypocrisy when one does or is given a pass simply because one can do it. Unfortuneately, one can't level classiness or good sense against someone and it's left to the realm of public-opinion, which sometimes is translated to democracy, American-style. Voters usually get what they ask for and what they deserve.

A Zinfandel might go well with that Red Herring

One could say that I am know for non-sequitir thinking, for not leaping to the most logical conclusions, perhaps a very feeble short-term memory, as well. Before the oncet of a cold, like now, I will sometimes drink red beet juice to stave it away. I'll gulp down a whole container and inevitably during the short pause spanning the time it took to take the last sip and the jaunt to the toliet, I will forget that I had made a concerted effort to finish a half litre of not exactly vile nor particularly delicious liquid. I'll start to leave water, and break into a momentary but viseral panic when I see that it is full-on bright pink and a dozen medical traumas flood through my head. I think the public have gulped down a similar tale with the market corrections and the global financial meltdown. So Iceland is basically bankrupt and this has all the markings of an old fashion run on the bank. If what is happening (exactly what is what is a little tricky to define) is anything more than a market correction, the reigning in of unrealistic and uncreative ambitions, then throwing all the money in the world won't solve it. Precious capitalism can't be rescued through nationalizing businesses and institutions. Credit can't be persuaded to become more cooperative, looser, by ticks of governmental manipulation. No actionable course really addresses any of the root causes, and only serves to undermine the value of real assets. Intelligent and selective amnesties need to be extended while things are allowed to collapse and stagnate, and creativity rewarded over greed and keeping up appearances.