New and improved!

“Slouching Towards Bethlehem to be Drunk” is dead!

Long live “Is It Crowded In Here Or Is It Just My Huge Self-righteous Ego?”

Why?

For starters, I haven't done a very good job of updating this blog. Instead of daily, weekly, or even bi-monthly, I only post about every three months or so. Then there's all the dead and dieing links that need editing, the rather mournful looking lay-out, and the mass of widgets and thingamabobs I felt the need to attach, in order to annoy my (mainly absent) readers.

The main reason though is simply this: I'm embarrassed. Having spent last Saturday night re-reading the last year or so's worth of entries, I cannot escape the conclusion that barring a few good rants and the occasional good idea, this page has been nothing but a continuous pity party of me.

I can defend the rants on issues political and social. After all the old blog contains “rant” in the title, but the endless carping about my job(s) past and present, and whining about my social life are just shameful. I mean really, does the internets really need more carping and self-aggrandizing drama? I think not.

So so long “Slouching”.

'Course, that being said, I'm still gonna blog. But if the market's already saturated with whining, carping, ranting, and personal minutia interesting only to the author and a few close friends, what should I write about?

I have an idea.

Actually, I have many ideas.

I've got ideas like British teens got spots, ideas like Icelanders got debts, I've got almost as many ideas as I've got urges to pun badly, and hit on inappropriate women when drunk. Problem is, I rarely if ever do anything about all these ideas.

So starting today, I'm renaming and revamping this whole thing. I'm reducing the rant and removing the whine.

Instead, when I get a good idea, like this, or this, I'm going to share it, be it a business idea, an invention, a work of fiction, a recipe, or something less tangible but none-the-less useful. Hopefully someone with the ability to actualize my passing fancies will stumble across this blog, take my idea, and run with it.

More power to 'em.

To get things started, I'd like to tackle an issue that's been floating around the webs and the op-ed columns of late, as the yearly thaw and slowly encroaching spring greets Reykjavik in a riot of wildflowe...er....litter.

I'm not sure how many Icelanders know this, but one of the less flattering stereotypes that we outlanders label y'all with is “litterbugs”. Seriously. The only place I've ever seen with more garbage on the streets, in the yards, tangled in the trees, etc, is Tijuana Mexico. No joke. I shit you not. I've been trying to figure out what could be done about this, as simply telling people to not throw their shit out the window doesn't seem to work.

I came up with two solutions. One is very much in keeping with my Anarchist ethos, the other not so much. Oddly, I like the other better at the mo', but I think that has more to do with the aforementioned rut of soul-killing negativity. Both solutions are aimed at killing, or at least maiming multiple fowl with a single projectile.

First off, do a little experiment with me. Take a nice long walk around Rvk. Notice all the litter. This shouldn't be hard, as much of it is brightly colored and dancing about on the winds. Take a closer look though, and you'll begin to notice an interesting thing: there are very few bottles or cans. Oh, there's juice boxes galore, wrappers from a fast food joints, whole bonus bags of junk, newspapers, candy wrappers, condoms, dead batteries ranging from AAA to car, but hardly a can or bottle to be found. Everyone knows why. It's simple. Bottles and cans are worth money. There is a silent, often embarrassed army of poor, or at least frugal people who spend their days and nights gathering up recyclables in order to pad out their poverty wages, unemployment benefits, retirement funds, etc.

So why not make the rest of the garbage valuable? Say that paper litter is worth 10ISK (the same price you get for a bottle or can) for every 500 grams picked up? Ditto with none-bottle plastic, broken glass, and other conceivably recyclable litter. Then say that every 500 grams of really nasty litter, like the condoms, the cigarette butts, the leaking batteries, half-empty containers of various toxic car-related liquids, etc pays a whopping 25ISK.

Suddenly Rvk becomes a lot cleaner. Suddenly a lot of people struggling to get by have a handy source of extra income, as do kids in search of pocket money. Suddenly this blight on Rvk's image is much reduced and the city gets better reviews in travel mags and more tourism as a result. Fewer tires and shoe-soles are punctured by broken glass and discarded nails and staples. People might actually start picking up litter year round, instead of waiting for the bored and unmotivated teens in Vinnuskóli to do it for them, and said teens might be a bit more motivated if they could cash in their trash at the end of the summer for a bonus.

The best bit of it is, all this comes from just paying a small amount for collected trash. It doesn't even require people to stop throwing shit out their windows, or force poor oppressed teens to walk all the way to the garbage can. Instead, the litterbugs of Rvk can go about their slovenly ways convinced of their virtuous generosity towards those less fortunate than themselves.

Everybody wins! Nobody suffers!

Which dovetails nicely into the second option, which is all about making people suffer.

In order not to muddy the issue, I'm going to put aside most of my Anarchist tendencies for this one.

Work-crews, orange-clad, armed with rakes and pick-me-ups and plastic bags are common sight along the road-sides in the US, UK, hell just about anywhere else in the world. These crews are primarily made up of people working off community service sentences for non-violent crimes. As part of their sentence, they spend their weekends (if they have a job) or a couple weeks serving the society whose rules they've broken.

If you take those rules as a given, and that some people have the power to enforce said rules while others don't as a given, this is all well and good. Pretty fair even.

I've never seen a crew like this in Iceland. Not in all the 16 years I've lived here.

So, as there is currently a massive waiting list for vacancies in the Icelandic prison system, and as it doesn't take a heaping helping of logic to see that flat rate fines (such as those imposed by the Icelandic justice system) always favor the rich whilst unfairly burdening the poor, I propose that people found guilty of non-violent crimes (up to and including massive bankster-style financial shenanigans) be sentenced to community service, no exceptions, no getting out of it by paying a fine.

Picking up garbage and such.

In bright orange jumpsuits.

Where everyone can see them.

Shame is one hell of a deterrent.

I think the length of sentence should definitely fit the crime (as is by no means the case today, where a man who systematically abuses his step daughter for five years will likely get off with a few hundred-thousand ISK in fines and maybe 2 years jail time) so that if you are caught littering (I'm not even sure this is against the law here) you have to spend a weekend picking it up, whereas if your caught swindling billions out of the pockets of the public, you should spend a couple years or so serving them.

Unlike the previous solution this one is not a win-win for everyone involved. Its also a much more complicated plan to put into action. First, you'd have to change the laws and the sentencing structure, and while changing the law is as easy as an act of parliament (lol) , changing the sentencing structure has proven to be nigh-impossible in the Icelandic courts. I mean, how are you going to get the judge to sentence a petty thief to a week of wet and windy outside labor, when you can't get them to sentence a rapist to more than two years (with weekend furloughs of course)?

Still, it would be worth it to see Jon Asgeir and company hunched over in the wind-driven rain alongside Miklubraut picking up used condoms....