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.