Is it crowded in here or is it just my huge self-righteous ego?

Where there's smoke, there's usually Sma...

2011-01-13T16:15:00.000-08:00

So for once I decided to make actual New Year's resolutions.

I resolved that should I (continue) to fail to find paid employment, I would volunteer at least two days a week at something productive. So far I'm having little trouble keeping that one. I've been volunteering at Habitat for Humanity, working on two houses here in Port Townsend, and it's FUN! I like carpentry work, when there's no foreman shouting at me, and no internalized foreman giving me crap. I get to talk to interesting people, learn heaps from a group of highly skilled and experienced master craftsmen, and feel good about how I spend my Wednesdays and Thursdays.

I resolved that I would walk/exercise more, to keep the Yankee pounds at bay, and so far that has gone pretty well too. Long beach walks, hikes, laps in the Y pool, medicine ball work-outs at home, and the occasional bout of silly-assed dancing when I'm relatively sure no one can see through the curtains are the core of my plan, although getting access to/buying/building a boat I could row out once a week and do some fishing from is also in the works.

The third resolution is the biggest, and also the hardest. I vowed, and still am vowing, to quit the cancer-sticks.

But...

You knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?

This one is proving difficult on a plethora of levels. I tried weaning myself down for a week (although to be fair and honest the last couple of days of said week there was no weaning) before quitting cold turkey.

That sucked so hard.

I mean really really sucked.

Like a Hoover in heat.

Thing is, I haven't gone 24 hours without a smoke since sometime in November 1994. Terrible I know, but there you have it. I made it 24 hours before succumbing in hopes of actually sleeping that night. Since then I've gone back to weaning myself off the smokes, rationing out the smaller, lighter cigs, cutting my habit from half-to-a-full pack a day down to 3-4 mini smokes a day.

The thing I find interesting is that while this makes perfect sense to me, many around me seem to feel that this is somehow the "wrong" way to do it. I can understand that, my first Cold Turkey was based on much the same thinking. Its the kind of thinking that makes people believe that if they want to loose weight, they have to starve themselves while simultaniously running a marathon every day, or that if they want to say learn a language, they must study for 8 hours a day 7 days a week to the exclusion of everything else. In essence, it is the demand that one punish oneself and make oneself miserable for the sake of a pre-determined goal.

Running Away from Utopia anyone?

Now, I've done this. It took me years to figure out that if I wanted to get in shape and stay in shape I needed to exercise (as opposed to "work out", i.e. making physical activity a part of my daily routine instead of an added "duty") enough to feel results, but not so much as to burn out and give up. Same with eating healthy, as when I went from a 2-4 liter-a-day cola habit down to maybe a liter and a half a week. Cold Turkey didn't work, but Lukewarm Chicken did.

I've smoked, daily, for 16 years. The idea that a person like me, with my need to think out my actions ahead of time as much as I do, who has relied on "smoke breaks" to deal with my nigh-clinical anxiety, and who (painfully uncool admission) still really likes to smoke, should "just quit" in a matter of days is frankly absurd. Unless one is a masochist, there's no reason to do it that way. I don't care about being "tough", I don't want to "ride it out" or "take it like a man".

I'm going to quit smoking. It will take awhile. But damnit, I've devoted so much time and effort to nicotine already, I'll be hogtied and spanked before I let my addiction make me a miserable, mean mofo to others and to myself.

I'll be nicotine free. Soon. But I'm not going to trade the stupidity of smoking for the masochism of forced virtue.

One step and a time...

Six (or Seven) Old Technologies That Peak Oil Will Resurrect, Causing Steam Punks To Cream Their Shorts.

2010-12-29T16:01:00.000-08:00

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last ten years or so, and considering my imaginary readership, that's not unlikely, you've heard of Peak Oil, or the point when all the gas runs out and society grinds to a shuddering halt, a new Dark Age descends, everything goes straight to fuck and starts to look like a certain Mel Gibson franchise.

Now, aside from the prerequisite survivalists, rich douche-bags with private armies, and “I told you so” eco-crusaders, the only group that should be looking forward to end of oil are, of all people, the steam punks.

Why?

Cause the future's so dark you gotta light gas-lights.

That's right, the technological clocks gonna get turned right back to half-past Victorian, only with a few modern twists.

Just like those cosplaying freaks like it.

6: Gasification plants, aka Gas-works:

Back in ye old coal-fired days, nearly every city or sizable town had a “gas-works”. Usually built of brick or stone, with huge cool looking chimneys and a railroad heading straight in. In other words, the sort of place your average steam punk aficionado would risk life and limb to enter, just to pose for pics in front of some eldrich tangle of tubes.

A typical gas-works usually consisted of several “coke ovens” which, sorry hipsters, didn't bake cocaine, but rather smoldered coal, removing impurities and making it burn more efficiently. The gases that this process gave off were called, imaginatively enough, “coal gas”, and were piped through the city to fuel street-lamps, light homes, and power furnaces, and even make you hallucinate and waste away from slow poisoning, like Edgar Allen Poe.

(Ya hear that Goths? That's right, put down that screw-top Chardonnay you keep claiming is blood and just huff some coal fumes! No seriously. Please. Do us all the favor.)

Now, these days you can't even put a lump of coal in your sister's spoiled brat's stocking without some Eco-crusaders smashing your skull in with a sustainably harvested ten-foot chunk of tree, so why the hell would these things be making a comeback?

Because you can get the same sort of gas by smoldering wood, garbage, yard-waste, and agricultural waste, and if you use the resulting charcoal as fertilizer (called “biochar”, 'cause putting “bio” in front of a word gives Capt. Planet a woody) you actually start to reduce and trap carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, causing global warming.

Admittedly, the tweaked out quasi-Waterworld that could result from global warming makes most steam punks squee like Pedobear at a Brazt convention, but that's another article.

Municipalities the world over are starting to look at “Biochar” plants as an inexpensive and possibly profitably green way to reduce waste and energy costs. Hopefully they'll build them out of brick and stone with huge chimneys and a railroad leading in...

5: Gaslights.

“Hang on a tic”, I hear all my imaginary readers remark, “I can get the point of modern day gas-works, but gas-lights? WTF dude, we have electricity!”.

To which I respond smugly, “Yeah, but will you have light-bulbs?”

Gas-lights work by burning gas, either straight out of the pipe, filtered through a wire-mesh mantle (like every camping propane lantern you've ever used) or to heat up lime, which glows super-bright at high temperatures, hence the “lime-light” that ye old thespians bathed in. Gas-lights are simple, easy to manufacture out of metal or ceramics, and work, well, pretty much as long as you have gas.

Insert Fart Joke Here.

You done?

Good.

Light-bulbs on the other hand burn out. Even the super-eco-greeny kind filled with healing energy and fairy farts. Oh, they last a long time, but they do burn out. And they aren't easy to recycle, let alone manufacture.

See, in a future without an seemingly endless stream of high-energy fuels, just making the glass for said bulbs would cost a small fortune. Then add all the energy necessary to ship in the materials (including for all you eco-yuppies who want to ban incandescent bulbs, highly toxic heavy metals to make fluorescents) to the factory, and then ship all those easily breakable bulbs out to the consumers during an energy crisis, and a $3 gas-light made in Bob's backyard out of old pipe fixtures that will last about forever suddenly seems like a better option.

Soon enough, we'll all be wiling away the wee hours to sputtering, flickering gaslights, the only lighting to use when creating steam-driven exoskeletons, or...

4:Syngas cars

“Syngas”. Just say it with me now, “syngas”. It even sounds steam-punky.

Syngas (sometimes called, with complete lack of poetry or precision,”woodgas” or “producer gas”) is the technical term for the gas that comes out of gasification plants. In 1901, Thomas Hugh Parker figured out that you can run a car engine on the stuff, and what's more, figured out you could attach a small-scale gasification plant to your car.

During WWII, because of fuel shortages and rationing, nearly every civilian car in Europe ran on syngas. Hell the Germans even had tanks running on the stuff. During the OPEC embargo in the 70's FEMA, in a fit of common sense sadly never again repeated, produced a study of how to quickly and cheaply convert vehicles to run on syngas in case of another oil-shortage.

These days, with oil prices going through the proverbial roof, people have started converting cars and trucks once again. The resulting conversions are usually a mess of strange piping, radiators, flaming vents, smoking metal drums and all the other aesthetic properties known to make steam punks harder than kilned hickory, although nothing this author's seen compares with the coolness of this.

3:Steam engines:

Let's face it, this article had to include steam engines. It just had to. But steam punks aside, there is a very good reason you'll likely be seeing more and more steam-driven vehicles around soon, and why those vehicles will likely look like something you'd imagine China Miéville driving around.

See, steam engines, whether turbine or piston, work by converting heat into expanding gas (water-vapor) and using the resulting energy to do mechanical work. The exhaust gases from whatever you burn to heat the water are simply wasted. Internal combustion engines, whether turbine or piston, convert the force of expanding gas, caused by combustion, into mechanical work. The heat produced is considered a waste-factor.

See where I'm going with this?

Combine the two into a steam-gas hybrid, and you're looking at theoretical increases in efficiency of 35-45% ( but of course, once actual engineering steps in and pisses on physics' parade, its more like 30%, max). As an added bonus, all the parts and materials you need are sitting around in the form of good-ol' fashioned metal, not highly-refined lithium, cadmium, and other cool sounding toxic materials. Lest you think I'm pulling this out of my ass, BMW is already on it.

I mean, sure, you could buy some sissified electric/internal combustion hybrid that looks like something out of an 80's sci-fi series, or you could have a friggin' syngas/steam hybrid monster with friggin' turbines! That runs on garbage! Or the bones of your enemies! And desalinates the water from flooded coastal cities while you're at it!

And speaking of steam and turbines...

2: Ships and Locomotives.

What's cooler than the aforementioned syngas hybrid? Well, how about a syngas-hybrid-clipper ship, cruising the sunken cities of the near future trading in rare technology, spices, and genetically enhanced love-slaves? Or shuddering steel locomotives flaring flame and spouting steam as they hurdle across the bleak windswept ruins of what once was called Wash-Ing-Town?

Thing is, rail and water based transport are about the most efficient technologies for moving large amounts of people or goods that anyone has ever come up with. Cars (even awesome syngas hybrids) don't even come close, and don't get me started on airplanes. What's more, trains and ships can use a wide variety of power-sources that just don't work that well when squeezed into a car frame.

Take electricity, for example. For a car to run on volts, it needs a lot, I mean A LOT, of batteries, and some method to charge them, which is usually too heavy to include in the vehicle in question.

Not so for trains. Because they run on fixed tracks, a third rail or overhead power line are you need to rocket across the wastelands. The same is true for steam/syngas. Trains can carry larger amounts of heavier fuel than can cars, making them the land-transport of choice for our post-oil future commutes to the gasworks. And those fixed tracks they run on are worlds easier and faster to lay down than building roads, using less energy in the process.

As for ships, not very long ago, almost all of the world's trade goods traveled by sea. That's why its called “shipping” after all. Even today, “shipping” is mostly driven by well, ships. Admittedly oil-powered ships, but ships nonetheless, because it's the most efficient way to move large amounts of anything from one place to another. Hell, they used to do it with sails alone! So when the oil runs out, be prepared to see huge tanker-sized clipper ships, complete with solar-panel sails, or huge wind turbines and steam engines plying the seas.

Hopefully fighting off cool pirates and not these a-holes...

And speaking of ships...

1: Airships

Every steam punk worth their bronze-painted Nerf ®-gun knows that the ultimate level of steamy coolness is the airship (or “Zeppelin”, but never, ever “blimp”). Why, just imagine sailing the skies in your own air-yacht, spitting your cheroot stubs over the side onto the roofs of the little people, fighting off sky-pirate attacks with your steam powered rotary cannon and general aeronautical badassetry.

The thing is, its not that far off. Modern, and even old-school fixed wing and rotary aircraft burn fuel like a pyromaniac at Burning Man, whereas lighter-than-air-vehicles, (LTAV, or “nambla”) use much less fuel (especially those that use helium/hydrogen/methane/ammonia instead of hot air) than heavier-than-air-vehicles (HTAV, or “nambla”). Add in the fact that they can be sailed with prevailing winds, have large surface areas that could be covered with photo-voltaic panels (PVP's, or...ok, I'll quit), and could be made tough as anything with the use of carbon-fiber, Kevlar, or even genetically engineered spider silk (squee!) and the airship might just come to dominate the skies of our increasingly steam punk future.

Just don't call it a “blimp”.

Seriously dude.

Rotary cannon, remember?

Numbered lists and the difficulty of daily ranting.

2010-12-06T15:18:00.000-08:00

So I'm trying to get back on the write-o-cycle, having fallen off roughly two years ago, but it's proving to be more of a challenge than I thought.

For starters, this time around, I'm doing a lot of writing that isn't going up in the form of a daily blog/rant/thingy, and is aimed instead at a slightly more commercial audience. So I'm working on churning out snarky numbered lists for Cracked.com, angry-yet-non-threatening political rant for TruthOut.org, and useful and informative how-to articles on Experts123.com.

Of course, none of the above have "hired" me, nor do I know exactly how to submit my work to them, but hey, keeps me busy and let's me occasionally convince myself that I might at some point make some money off of it.

Thing is though, that the more I think of writing as a job, the less I want to do it, and the fewer and fewer topics I want to discuss on my blog, as I think "hey, wait a sec, shouldn't share that for free", which then makes me feel like a total money-grubbin' capitalist a-hole.

But every now and again I come up with something that won't fit anywhere but my blog, some short little ditty that just has WRB written all over it.

Like this.

America Explained in 4 Simple (but false) Statements.

4. "The American Dream" aka "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps."

For starters, practically no one in Merka has bootstraps anymore, we all get to wear shitty fall-apart-at-the-sight-of-weather sneakers manufactured in off-shore sweatshops and sold in box stores so huge our fat asses can't make it from one end to another without renting an electric scooter. Aside from that, this statement ignores the reams of data gathered over the last 50 or so years that shows that not only is upward mobility no longer a trend in Merka, but that downward mobility has been the rule for years now, even before the Great Re-possession. The reason Merkans still hold on to this ridiculous belief is based on...

3. "If you're poor, its you're own fault for being lazy/sick/stupid/black/brown/ etc."

Merkans hate poor people. Poor people not only make the whole country look bad, but for some weird reason there are always people in the government trying to take away our money and give it to no good lazy poor people. Oh, we'll happily spend tax money on police and prisons to lock them up, but actually trying to prevent poverty-based crime (and the VAST majority is poverty based) by obtaining some measure of *shudder* "economic equality" is straight out freedom-hating-socialist heresy because...

2. "Competition brings out the best in people".

O rly? So the same thing that induces people already making assloads more than your average working Joe (who does something worthwhile with his labor) to take illegal steroids to further wring cash and endorsements from people stupid enough to believe smacking a globular chunk of leather with a stick makes you a role-model brings out the best in people? The same thing that "forces" companies to lay-off thousands and move their operations abroad to avoid taxes, labor laws, and that pesky lack of slave-labor is a good thing? Really?!?! So a system wherein insurance companies and HMOs compete with each other to screw as much money out of the public while providing as little of that there expensive medical care as possible brings out the best in the assholes? I can only imagine that without competition they morph into some huge encephalitic elder god bent on murdering existence...

1. "There can be no common good without personal greed".

Okay, fine, they don't say it like that. Mainly 'casue they've given up on even the idea of a "common good", but this is what's behind all the "trickle-down" talk, the bullshit about "rising tides lifting all boats". People believing this, and believing that a piece of paper with a government seal justifies it are the reason that fully half the resources of this country, hell, of the world, are owned by a tiny fraction of the population, who don't give a flying fuck about the "common good" and would sooner slit your throat and sell your organs on Ebay than part with even a fraction of their vast wealth.

To summarize:

Most of you reading this are members of the new global underclass (you are just lucky enough to be at the top of that particular shit heap). In all likelihood, no matter how smart you are, how creative, or how hard you work, you will stay a member of the new global underclass. Because like all caste-systems, you are born into it.

The people you work for, who likely pit you against your fellow workers, while pitting the company you work for against other companies in an endless drive to "beat" the "other" "team" are in all likelihood the also the owners of the "other team". They will continue to pit you against other people just like you to force you to accept lower wages, fewer benefits, and eventual indentured slavery because "competition brings out the best in people". These same asshats will then claim that any move made to bring any-level of fairness to this fucked up situation will result in global economic misery (like we don't have that now) because if they are not allowed to make obscene profits off of your hard labor, you won't receive your minimum wage paycheck next week.

Where's that rifle????

PS: Yes I have sources to back this up. No I didn't post them. Why should I go through the trouble, I mean look at the Tea Party, not only did they essentially take over America, they did it without siting any real sources! Mostly they just pulled xenophobic libertarian shit out of their fat ignorant asses and flung it into the public debate like so many masturbating zoo monkeys.

Can't beat 'em...

Hmmm...

2010-12-01T20:26:00.000-08:00

I had this glorious plan.

I was going to write a scathing denounciation of wealth and the wealthy, to be concluded with a soaring call to arms, for the masses to rise up and smash the egocentric, greedy bitches who are actively destroying their fellow human beings and the very planet that supports us.

I was going to. Totally rip into it. Tear shit right the fuck up.

Then I did a bit of research.

I got depressed.

I laid down and took a friggin' nap, like an over-active toddler.

Shit is worse that most of you think, especially when its worse than I think.

More tomorrow.

Beer now.

Burning Weed

2010-11-30T15:11:00.000-08:00

Today at breakfast I picked up a copy of the Little Nickel Classifieds, usually a good place to find jobs, cheap trucks, or adoption-for-hire schemes.

The first ad on the front page was for a tip-line that pays up to $5000 for turning in pot farmers.

Right next to it were a solid dozen ads for "Medical Marijuana" ranging from home-delivery to dubious "Doctors" prepared to write you out a script for $100 bucks a pop.

One of the biggest reasons there is next to no meaningful Left (the Liberal class, the Dems, most of the Progressives, and Greens in the US are "Leftist" in more or less the same way that McDonald's is "food") in the US is pot.

More specifically, the fetishization of pot by a large number of left-leaning people, the continued criminalization of pot by the establishment right, and the division within the would-be Left over pot.

So many of those who hold socialist, anarchist, co-operative, and communalist views are more interested in getting high, and the legalization of their drug of choice then they are in social justice, universal health care, ending poverty (more on that tomorrow), ecological justice, or the end to America's permanent wars on various common nouns.

Except of course the "War on Drugs".

That one they'll fight.

For the record, I support the legalization of pot, not because I smoke it, not because I entertain some rainbow-colored unicorn shit idea that "The world would be better if everyone smoked weed", but because making pot criminal fuels the prison-industrial complex, is used as an excuse for ever-increasing intrusive police state measures, and serves to prevent the adoption of wide-spread agricultural/industrial use of renewable hemp (which the "legalize it" crowd often tries to trot out as the "real" reason for their quest, which would seem a lot more reasonable if they weren't red-eyed and scarfing down White Castle).

But the sheer amount of time, energy, and focus that goes into this one issue is completely out of whack. The US is currently fighting two seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention "police actions" and such in Columbia, Guiana, Belize, most of the 'Stans, Yemen, and the Horn of Africa, to name just a few. The last three years have seen the single greatest movement of wealth from the poor to the rich in the history of, well, history. The rich/poor gap has ballooned, the planet is as sick as a chemo-patient, a cabal of trans-national corporations are constantly tightening their grip on the very essentials and building blocks of life (water, food, DNA) and the one thing that gets the vote out, the one thing that stirs the soma-vacationing Left outa it's off-grid cabins is the call to legalize pot?

Which of course hands the Corporatist Right and their butt-kissing Moralist minions enough ammo to blow gaping holes in the credibility of anyone in anyway connected to the legalize-it-left, while those "leftists" who reject pot (and booze, and tobacco, and meat, and sex, and well, most things that make life fun) and tattoo X's into their fists turn on the very people who they claim to share ideals of ecological and social justice with, because unlike the Moralist crowd, the left likes to smoke, drink, and fuck.

Ok, fine, the Moralists like to smoke drink and fuck too, they just won't admit it.

How about we focus on the pressing issues; human rights, social justice, economic equality, the abolition of wealth (more on that tomorrow too), and ecological justice, and leave the legalization of pot (or the criminalization of animal products, stupid vegans) until the current tide of reactionary economic fascism has been beaten back into Mordor and the gates slammed shut?

Burning Bushes

2010-11-29T11:01:00.000-08:00

A while ago, having nothing but time on my hands and the overwhelming urge to do something other than housework for a change, I went out and drastically cut back the hedges that blocked nearly all the light from the living room and kitchen windows. It took hours, chopping away with a cane knife, cutting tree-sized limbs with a chainsaw, and trying (but not really succeeding) to finish-cut with an electric hedge trimmer.

By the time I was done, I had light streaming into previously dark rooms, and a pile of hedge-trimmings the size of a Buick.

As I started stuffing said trimmings into the yard-waste can, and then black plastic bags, I started to reminisce about my childhood, when late summer would include at least one big bonfire of collected yard-waste, scrap wood, and (shocking by today's environmental standards) whatever other flammable junk we had to get rid of.

You can't do that most places these days. Here in Port Townsend, you either have to set your yard-waste out for pick up (which you pay for) every-other Thursday, or pack it up and drive it to the dump (where you have to pay).

And there, in the crisp autumn sun, I had my Moses-moment.

First, it dawned on me that these rules do nothing to "help the environment", rather they wrap a green cloak around a government mandated monopoly on waste disposal. Think about it for a minute. You are required to send this material either in your own (gasoline burning) vehicle or the city contractor's (diesel burning) truck to a central location, where it is chopped up and ground down (by a diesel-powered chipper) and placed in a huge pile to compost (where the anaerobic bacteria deep in the pile will leach out large amounts of methane, which does ten to twenty times more greenhouse gas damage than CO2), until it has decomposed enough to be shipped out in container trucks (diesel again) to garden centers to be sold as potting soil, which is then taken home in the back of consumer's cars and trucks, burning fuel all the way.

Whereas if I burned the stuff right here in the garden (its mostly laurel trimmings, which rot very very slowly but burn well, as they are rich in oils) there is a much smaller amount of air pollution (nicer smelling too, laurel makes a sweet smoke), and the ash and charcoal (trapped carbon) can simply be spread back into the soil. To top off the absurdity, our house, and nearly every house on the street has a wood-burning stove, all of which were blazing away.*
*For the record, no, I can "just burn all the trimmings in the wood stove" as they will burn wet and oily, risking a chimney-fire like the one we just had, a result of the previous tenant not being aware of this fact.

It got me thinking of other "greenwashed" practices that we all feel obliged to follow, yet aren't all that ecologically sound.

Take recycling. While you can still get paid for some recyclables in Iceland, very few places in the the Northwest will pay you to do so. That didn't used to be the case. These days, you have to pay someone (either directly, for curbside recycling, or indirectly for the fuel to take it to the dump) to recycle. Not to mention that the city-contractors drive two separate vehicles, one to pick up trash, one for recyclables, doubling the carbon emissions. After which the dump uses petroleum burning vehicles to shred, compact, bale, and ship these materials to distant plants to be recycled into new goods, which are then shipped all the way back here.

It would be one thing if the recycling took place locally. * If waste was recycled into useful products within a hundred mile radius, to be re-sold primarily within that radius, then the net reduction on greenhouse gases, resource depletion, and local unemployment would certainly justify the resultant pollution. But if the purpose is to simply provide a cheaper set of raw materials to distant manufacturers, is it really much "greener" than resource-extraction (mining, logging, etc).

*It may in regard to paper products, as there is a paper mill not a half-mile from the dump. If not, that's just fucking criminal.

Or take electric and electric-petroleum hybrid cars. Is the amount of pollution and resource extraction, not to mention the fuel spent on shipping material and finished products, that goes into manufacturing these vehicles counter-acted by their reduced CO2 emissions? Wouldn't it make more sense to simply (and it is simple) convert existing vehicles to run on renewable fuels (like methane, wood-gas, ethanol, and biodiesel/plant oils, all of which if produced locally for local sale are if not fully carbon-neutral* then at least much less harmful than petroleum fuels) or further convert them into steam/internal combustion hybrids (which do not require any of the scarce, hard to refine chemicals and minerals required by gas/electric hybrids and "cutting edge" electric cars)?

*Depending on how they are produced, some of these fuels actually result in a net reduction in CO2, not just neutrality.

In the end, recycling, hybrid cars, and yard waste disposal are not about "saving the planet" as much as they are about "insuring profits". The garbage company that hauls away my yard clippings and recyclables makes a profit from the monthly charge to our household, and a further profit from the resale of the valuable materials (paper, plastic, aluminum, glass, scrap-metal, wood-chips, compost/potting soil etc) to whoever will pay the highest price, whether near or far, for purposes ecologically sound or not. The car companies that tout their newest "ultra-efficient" hybrid wonder wagons don't tell you about the waste their production causes, nor that you could reduce your bills along with your "carbon footprint"* by simply converting your existing car to run on locally produced renewable fuel. They don't want to talk about those things. They want you to buy their cars.

The irony is, if I wanted to flaunt convention, regulation, and the like, and just set the remaining pile of trimmings alight, I'd likely have to use a either a petroleum-based accelerant to start the fire, or some plant-oil shipped here all the way from California, or paper produced locally, shipped thousands of miles to be printed, then thousands of miles to be filled with product, and then thousands of miles so I could buy it.

You just can't win...

Back in the USSA...

2010-10-13T10:21:00.001-07:00

So I've been back for about two months now, and life is just speeding along. Like fast, really really fast, and as I'm usually a slow kinda joe, its scary and exhilarating at the same time. Kinda like a roller-coaster.

The only problem I'm having is an old and familiar one. I keep "I should"ing myself to a state of utter panic, instead of, as my rather wise and wonderful Mary says "letting the universe unfold as it should".

This morning, as I was trying to ignore the "I shoulds" by wasting yet more time on Facebook, an old schoolmate contacted me about a class we took together, and long story short, sent me an essay I'd written last year which in a wondrous case of serendipity, reminded me of why I'm happier when I stop shoulding myself all the time.

So instead of continuing to beat myself up about not writing as much as I "should", I'll just repost my old self giving my new self some good advice, and call it good.

(Written for The Ethics of Nature, University of Iceland, Fall 2009)

Running Away From Utopia

I’m a raggedy kind of man.

Like most things about ourselves my raggedness is partly choice, partly upbringing, and partly my “nature” (as slippery and elusive a thing as that is).

I wear second-to-third hand clothes until the holes are too big to ignore. Not as a fashion statement, but because I figure if folks are going to make things disposable, might as well wear them out before we dispose of them. My apartment started out life as a guestroom and storage space, and although I did break down and buy new furniture (for the first time in my life) for the living room, the kitchen and most of the rest is at least 75% recycled, salvaged, or flat out McGyvered.

Every bit of electronics in my place was given to me, either as a gift or a hand-me-down. If people had not seen fit to foist this stuff on me, I would never have a TV, cell phone, or laptop.

(In the interest of honesty, I have since purchased a new cell-phone, as the US uses a different, far inferior system.)

I buy cheap food and do my best to cook it at home. I eat local, because it tastes better, because I was raised that way, and because part of me recoils from the idea of food from thousands of miles away. I dumpster dive on occasion, “liberate” food from work that would otherwise be thrown out, and take advantage of free eats whenever I can, not out of poverty, or even stinginess, but because I hate waste.

On the other hand, I hate having too much stuff around me. Pack-rattishness brings out my mean streak. I cannot for the life of me understand people who horde things useless to themselves instead of letting others who might make use of said stuff do so. Except for books that is. Parting with the written word is like loosing a limb for me.

(Amazingly, I got rid of 80% of all my books when I moved back to 'Merka, still reeling...)

I work, but as little as I can and only at something I feel is worthwhile. As in most cases, this ethical stance results in a certain level of poverty. Not that I mind. I’ve long been of the opinion that wealth is to poverty as obesity is to malnutrition.

So when faced with this particular project, (We were asked to come up with a project that involved out personal relationship with nature and report on our progress) I ran into a bit of a snag. I consume little, I don't own a car (never have, even if I know how to drive), most of the time I avoid even the bus if I can. I toyed with the idea of vegetarianism, but frankly the argument for it doesn’t hold water for me. Besides, I like meat, fish, and cheese. It’s not like I live the life I live to be greener than thou, nor do I live my life the way I do out of some pious sense of “duty”. I live my life the way I do because, by and large, it makes me happy. I like the challenge of living on limited means; I love the creativity and cunning that it takes. But when faced with this assignment, with the idea of essentially experimenting on myself, using reductionism and preconceived goals to measure my relationship with nature, I recoiled. One of my other traits came to the fore, namely a level of rebelliousness that tends to get me in trouble.

I simply didn’t want to force myself into yet another project essentially based on the idea that I should have to constantly strive towards a goal with no way of knowing if it will be of any real benefit to me. Frankly I’m tired of society telling me I’m supposed to be something more, something better, healthier, happier, stronger, better looking, morally superior, more educated, more environmentally and socially responsible than I am.

After all, if ethics is the study of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” the world we live in is a study in “you shoulds” and “you shouldn’ts”.

And therein lays the rub. I’ve grown ever so weary of the proponents of positive social, environmental and political change stating their case in the same sad sorry self-help arguments that religions and moral-majoralists seem so fond of. I’m tired of my life, my body, my society, everything being reduced to one big project, grand glorious goals upon whose altar we sacrifice experience and pleasure in the hope of obtaining some heavenly utopian future. I have no interest in a revolution I can’t dance to, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to die for the cause.

I’d rather live for it. Besides, hair shirts itch.

By framing everything in terms of improvement, goals, progress we fall into the inverse of the trap that we fall into when we discount the welfare of future generations to service our own present greed. Instead of living in the here and near now, learning to live within our means, learning to accept limits, as individuals, societies, and as a species, we sacrifice the possible present happiness (which would likely lead to lives that wouldn’t be based on the poverty of our progeny) for a future utopia which we will never obtain. In the meantime, while we try to perfect ourselves to fit our preconceived ideas of perfection the world rolls merrily along towards oblivion.

A greeny utopia full of beautiful thin healthy people who never get cancer, never get fat, always smell of flowers and live lightly on the earth, happily telecommuting and consuming a never-ending series of earth-friendly products from the cornucopian horn of progress is not the world I want to live in. I long ago realized that utopias are terrible things. No one is free in utopia, because you can’t have a utopia with free will. Utopias are static, unchanging, eternal.

And Nature hates stasis as much as it abhors a vacuum.

And yet I’ve long been guilty of utopian thinking. Hell, we’ve all been. Whether planning your own physical utopia of six-pack abs and breast implants, or commercial utopias of success and acclaim, or political utopias free of pollution, violence, sexism or whatever other sin you despise.

I’d beat myself up for buying too much, for not having a vegetable garden, for eating out, for my rather embarrassingly voluminous beer consumption. I turned bike rides on crisp fall days into mindless calculations of calories burnt, of how much faster I was than a week before.

So I decided to try to not be a utopian for a while. That’s my project. Which is really difficult. It’s a Zen sort of thing. A project that rejects goals, that refuses to measure progress.

I have no idea how I’ve done.

And I think that’s the point.

That said, I can say the experience has been positive. Riding your bike while counting calories is a chore, whereas zipping along, enjoying the cold air pumping through your lungs, feeling the force of your legs powering you along, will put a smile on anyone’s face. Letting go of self-imposed academic standards and just letting yourself learn what you’re interested in is far more satisfying than high grades (although a my internalized ethos of academic over-achievement has made that part of the plan hard to stick to). Being content is far more enlightening, I’ve found, than being ambitious. Better for the planet too.

In letting go of preconceived notions, I’ve gained a level of contentment that I haven’t felt in a long time, which has led to some interesting insights. Content people almost by definition consume less. When you are happy with who you are, what you have, and where you are, you won’t feel compelled to chase after products and services that promise you the contentment you already have. Moreover, content people have the time and energy to think things over, to act in ways that will allow their contentment to continue. By working towards present contentment they avoid the trap of utopianism, because utopias are generally the product of malaise. Content people are hard to sell stuff to, hard to frighten, hard to shame, hard to control.

Happiness is revolutionary.

That being said, there are drawbacks, mainly social. What with the ingrained Protestant work ethic now in a dysfunctional marriage with pop-culture worship of the wealthy, successful, or famous explaining to people that you are purposely living in the moment and intentionally avoiding making long term plans garners a lot of criticism. People will see you as lazy, as “part of the problem”, as a free-loader (even though I owe nothing, pay my taxes, and receive no government support) or they will worry that you are depressed, having a breakdown, or “just trying to put a positive spin on your unfortunate financial situation.” (actual quote from an acquaintance now bankrupt in Iceland)

Then there’s the pressure. Thing is, in the world we live in, striving for future success or achievement is taken as a given. One is told that “resting on your laurels” is a bad thing, rather than an acknowledgement of contentment. This process is so ingrained that I have a really hard time not replacing those preconceived goals I’ve given up (like getting a Master’s Degree, losing ten kilos, finishing my remodel at some predetermined date) with a slew of new preconceived goals.

That being said, the more practice I have recognizing the symptoms of utopianism the easier it is to avoid them, and by avoiding them, I hope to let my life unroll slowly on its own accord, not constantly goading it onward. Every preconceived goal is a paving stone on my own personal primrose path to perdition, and I’ve been on the road crew for far too long.

Hallí

2010-08-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

We were friends, maybe not the closest friends, but I loved you.

You were kind and generous, and despite all life had thrown at you, downright jolly most of the time.

In every way that counts you were one of the best people I've ever had the pleasure, the joy of knowing.

I'll remember your acid wit, your absurdist humor that more often than not left me clutching my side with tears in my eyes.

I'll remember how you were always ready to help, no matter what the need.

I'll always admire just how much you made of your short life, how many people you helped, how many lives you touched.

I miss you.

When we said goodbye I never thought it would be forever.

Rest in peace my friend.

Or party in paradise.

I think the latter is more likely.

Dreaming on s Sunday afternoon...posting on a Monday morning...

2010-05-31T04:29:00.000-07:00

Dateline Reykjavik, Sunday May 30^th 2010 19:30

Almost twenty-fours hours on and the celebration is slowly waining, though brief flares of revelry still light the crowds like a twinkle in Bacchus' eye. Drink, dance and general debauchery are slowly receding in a tide of hang-over and hunger, a kind of hazy sweet happiness seeps across the gathered crowd here at Húsdýragarður. Long disorderly lines of beer-soaked revelers blend with sun-addled kiddies and tired seniors clucking their tongues like a Greek chorus of unbelieving poultry, waiting for a paper plate full of roasted flesh, the former denizens of the park offered up in joyous sacrifice to feed the teeming masses, served up by the two glowing lights of Iceland's brave new world.

Jón Gnar, honorable mayor of Reykjavik mans the massive grills, bloody knife in hand, slicing slivers of charred flesh, ginger hair askew and war-painted with zinc oxide, while the triumphant Reubenesque nymphs of Hera Björk's Eurovision team shake hands, sign babies, and serve up the platters, showered in praise, proposals marital or simply carnal, and the incandescent adoration of their ecstatic countrymen.

No one really believed it would happen. Despite Iceland's long-running and nigh-religious devotion to the Eurovision song contest, despite the polls showing Bestur Flokkurinn with a commanding lead, most seemed resigned to the idea that it would all be for naught on the night, just as the parties that rode regally into power on the crest of Búsahaldsbýltingin ushered in not a glorious renewal but a staggering, plodding, tragicomic continuation of business as usual.

But we doubting Tómasar got our collective asses handed to us by the raging tide of fate. Je ne sais quois thundered across Europe like a conquering army, the 12-points pouring in one after another (save for sour-puss Britain and glowering Holland) in the single biggest win in the history of the contest, making Lordy's Hard Rock Halelluia victory look lukewarm by comparison.

Men wept and women charged into the street, hurling confetti and bearing breasts to the late lingering sun in orgiastic glee. Wild chants of “Best í heimi!” rocked the streets to their very foundations.

Hard on the heels of our stunning artistic victory, Bestur Flokkurinn, a party so dark horse as to be equine obsidian won not a majority, not a pure majority, but every single seat on the city council clearing the decks of decades of political detritus in one fell swoop. In a matter of hours, Reykjavik was free of the four-party yolk.

Every street, every park, parking lot, play-ground, and pub filled to bursting with weeping smiling dancing throngs. “Best í Heimi!” blending with chants of “Lífi Nonní!”. Bonfires were lit in public parks, and employees of the state-run liquor stores pulled keys from their pockets and threw wide the doors to their cornucopian stores, the police wisely staying clear, moving instead to pointlessly protect the homes of four-party hierarchy, ignored by revelers.

The dancing and drinking, the thunderous rolling French choruses that built and crested only to build again continued into the wee hours, and as the sun rose improvised loudspeakers, strapped to buses decorated with the triumphant raised thumb of the our bright new hope chattered out the message.

“Húsdýragarður! Koffí og brauð! Tónlist! Grillveislu! Í bóði Bestur Flokkurinn!”

A mass of humanity, marching up Laugarvegur in shameless disregard for the traditional parade trajectory swallowed me up and I swam along the crowd, kissing and kissed, hugged and hugging, more than once groped.

I grab my steaming plate and plastic spork, taking the opportunity to slip a sloppy tongue kiss to one of the blissed out background singers, the blond, and then weave my way through the throng to the now-empty reindeer pen, it former inhabitants like all the edible denizens now turning lazy circles on the spits or flip-flopping on the grills.

I hunker down in a half-circle of rough stone overlooking the park, coping a squat next to a bleary eyed middle-aged gent in a X-Æ T-shirt under a stained and frayed sports jacket. We sit in companionable silence staring down the hill at the five blond beauties (and one random fat guy), naked save rainbow droplets as they perform a impromptu synchronized swimming number in the now empty seal pond.

Popping a bloody piece of seal kidney into my beery mouth I ask my dining partner if he was a supporter or a member of our new glorious vanguard.

“Oh, I'm a member alright” he giggles, clearly the worst for drink. “I'm the one whose going to make sure this whole thing pays off.”

“Whatdayamean?” slips from my beer-addled lips like an exhausted salmon down a mountain cascade who's figured spawning is just way too much effort.

“All very hush shush you know” he slurs, bits of spittle seeping out the sides of his slack lips, “I'm not at library to say really, not save for pubic knowledge”.

Needless to say his stammered collection of málvillur collapsed me into a state of giggles too paralyzing to press the question further.

Regaining my breath with the aid of my last looted lager, I feel a brief chill down my spine at my now-depart meal mate's words, but I shake it off, reminding myself that the undiscovered country is rarely as here-there-be-dragons as we tend to think. My rubbery legs to lead me out the main gate and stagger home.

Catching my breathe after slogging up to Laugavegur, I stare out over the mad victory carnival filling Laugardal and smile. A line of buses, private cars and taxis has lined up, those sober enough to drive offering rides to the car-less and the intoxicated. An elderly woman holds a hand-made sign with “Hlíðum” spelled out in black marker and I stumble over, ask if I can get a ride, and am cheerfully helped into the back seat of a the old Lada, soon sandwiched between a lovely young brunette and a frightfully drunk business type, mumbling something about Ragnarök and pale horses under his breath. We roll down the window and let him ride with his head out, wind in his thinning hair like a follicly challenged bulldog.

The brunette politely turns down my offer (made more out of habit than desire, 24 hours of solid drink and all I want is bed, alone) and I fumble my keys, stagger out of my boots, and collapse grateful and happy into my bed, the sun still shining and hoarse-throated choruses of Je ne sais quois lullabying me to rest.

Party of 9

2010-05-15T05:35:00.000-07:00

As I contemplate whether or not to haul my lazy punk ass down to Austurvellir to take part in the concert in support of the Rvk 9, I'm struck by an idea.

Remember when I promised to blog about good ideas.

See, the State is bound and determined to punish nine nigh-randomly chosen individuals in order to stifle future uprising, and though I hope against the odds that the 9 are released, many feel that they will likely be found guilty.

Now, if this happens, I think that in light of the over-crowding and expense currently crippling the Icelandic prison system, these nine should if sentenced at all, be sentenced to community service. To be precise, they should be "sentenced" to serve as replacement MP's for all those named as "culpably incompetent" in the recent government report, with full pay and benefits.

I'd call that justice.

9 black lambs to the slaughter

2010-05-12T04:40:00.000-07:00

As the Revolution bellies up to the table and prepares to eat its young, I once again feel the need to break my already utterly shattered vow of Pollyannahood and let the rant fly.

At one o'clock today, an Icelandic court will hear the case against 9 protesters accused of "attacking the sanctity of Parliament".

9 black lambs are singled out of a flock of 30 so odd protesters that day, and out of the thousands who were routinely protesting all those long months. Singled out for attempting to walk through an unlocked door into a public building to reach a public seating area where the public has the right to observe its so-called servants work in the public interest. Parliament Security stops them, denies them access, and then attempts to physically block access and expel them. A scuffle breaks out and there are minor injuries on both sides. The police show up in seconds in an overwhelming show of force, one officer gets bitten whilst hurling a protester to the ground to be hogtied and chucked in the back of a paddy wagon. The 9 singled out for sacrifice at the alter of the sacred politic are charged with "attacking the sanctity of Parliament" and face a minimum sentence of 1 year's imprisonment, and a maximum of life (the maximum sentence for rape and murder is 16 years, and has to my knowledge never been imposed on a rapist).

They will likely be found guilty.

The whole situation sickens me, and raises some disturbing questions.

For starters, why these 9? Not one news report I've found has given any reason why only 9 of the 30 odd people involved are charged. While logically the two who managed to get to the viewing area and shout at the MPs to "get the fuck out of here" could be singled out, could it not also be because these 9 were members of the loose-knit black-clad mask-wearing groups who weren't protesting for new elections, weren't tied to existing political clans, and were in fact aiming for an actual revolution, instead of the pathetic coup d'etat we got instead? Why, in the midst of massive and disruptive protest, was the door to the viewing area unlocked? Had the protesters entered in stealth, clad in suits and Sunday best and telling the guards they were there to support the parties then in power, would they have been waved through? Could it be that the police, through whatever combination of incompetence, inexperience, and outright provocation managed to engineer all of the more "violent" incidents, decided to "allow" this protest to proceed in order to sweep in heroically and salvage their faltering support whilst tarring the protesters with the brush of treason? Why has the media, which has delighted in front-page photos of the banksters being arrested at this most conveniently distracting moment, hardly found the time to name the 9 individuals, let alone publish pictures and interviews (so far I've only found one interview, in today's paper, of one of these sacrificial black sheep)? Could it be that the powers that be, who rode into their current positions by latching on to the developing revolution like a tick to the hide, are hoping to appease the reactionary conspiracy theories of the ousted parties and "prove" they had nothing to do with the pot-pounding fire-lighting skril who did the ousting? Or could it be that they are quietly hoping to slip through a precedent that will make it easier to crush future protests?

30 members of the public push their way through a public entrance to a public building to reach the public seating area to give public servants a piece of their minds and they are charged with a serious crime. 60 some odd public servants sit for years in a public building "earning" public money while gifting public resources to political friends and family, lining their pockets with "campaign contributions" and "bullet loans" from bankster cronies, creating a "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others" pension plan, and eventually bankrupting an entire nation through a wicked brew of corruption, incompetence, and selfishness and these 9 black lambs are sent to the block, whilst the Judas goats go about their business, safe in the sacred confines of power, privilege, and ill-gotten wealth?

Where's that sledgehammer and can of gasoline?

Ok....but....

2010-05-06T05:05:00.000-07:00

Thing is, I've been trying to be positive.

No, Really!

I have!

But to little avail as my ingrained incensed ranting continues to spill out into the interwebs.

Especially two posts that at first I really liked, but am starting to think were cheap shots...

So I'll you quote fellow expat-Cascadian MayFray.

"Can I talk a little bit about how cool Iceland is? First of all, one of the reasons I decided to move here (well, aside from Tumi, obviously) was to go to graduate school. The Environment and Natural Resources program here is taught in English, and because of the overwhelming governmental support for education, tuition for grad school works out to about $600 a year. The one year I worked for Pacific Science Center between undergrad and moving to Iceland earned me a tax return that paid my entire graduate school tuition! In my opinion, this is the way education should be handled all over the world. And then there's healthcare. All of my prenatal care, and delivery, and postnatal care was free....that's right, FREE! We paid about $50 for the ambulance ride to the hospital, and I've paid about $30 for breast feeding advice, but other than that, all of our care was paid for by the government. The midwife COMES TO YOUR HOUSE EVERYDAY for a week after the baby is born to check up on you and answer your questions. Then, a nurse comes to visit every week or so for the first month to weigh the baby and provide even more help. We have an appointment to take Elsa in for her first check up actually IN the clinic in two weeks. I absolutely love this set-up, and when I feel homesick, it helps me to remember the really good things about the place I chose to live; like that the government invests its resources in creating a healthy, well-educated society, which are both goals I can fully support!

People here pay ridiculously high taxes, but that money goes to education, healthcare, social security, and other services the government provides to take care of its people. In America, our tax dollars do go to some support services, but a huge amount also goes to killing people in less fortunate places. All of which begs the question; Why can't Americans take better care of themselves?! We pretend like we're the biggest, strongest, best-est country in the world, but we neglect the poorest of our citizens. Only recently have we started to embrace the idea that adequate health care is a human right! Imagine an America where a university education costed $600 per year....what kind of a country would we be able to make then? Think of all the talent that is going to waste because of the prohibitively expensive price of a college education, and higher taxes to support a 'socialist' state doesn't sound that bad. That's the end of my lil' rant...mostly I feel very lucky to have been given such excellent education and care and support while living here.

Oh, and Tumi gets 6 months PAID PATERNITY LEAVE! Thank you, Iceland!"

'Cause as much as familiarity has bred contempt, one needs reminding from time to time that Iceland can be pretty fucking awesome.

Foot in Mouth

2010-04-21T04:10:00.000-07:00

So Iceland's Prez, good ol' Oli Gris, has done it again.

Infamous for his less-then-well-considered faux-pas (as well as his unabashed cheerleading for the pack of banksters responsible for bankrupting the island) like "You ain't seen nothing yet!" and "We will not pay!", Oli has topped himself by scare-mongering about a possible Katla eruption at the absolute worst time to do so.

Now, I for one think he should step down, but then again I think the entire political class in Iceland, left right and center, should just admit they have no idea what they are doing, knew exactly what they were doing, and fuck right the hell off.

However, as there is a longstanding political culture of non-accountability on this blessed rock, I don't see any of that happening.

So what to do about Oli?

Well, while I usually can't stand the tendency of Icelandic institutions to go gonzo protectionist on their language (it is illegal for MPs to address Parliament in anything but Icelandic, and even my work place, which has four non-native workers requires that all meetings and communications from management be made exclusively in Icelandic) in this case I can see a practical use for it.

Pass a law stating that whoever holds the Office of President of Iceland must at all times when addressing anyone in an official capacity speak Icelandic. Then hire a translator who can edit out his more painful attempts to swallow his own ankles...

Insurance...

2010-04-07T04:26:00.000-07:00

We all know that socialized medicine is immoral, un-American, un-Christian, causes homosexuality, pre-mature baldness, hip-hop music, vampirism, and is just one more bar of conveniently dropped soap on the slippery slope down into the pit of demonic progressive tyranny, but few realize just how far down that slope we've already slipped.

But instead of ranting about the current evil socialist programs busily burrowing through the once-hallowed flesh of America like satanic tapeworms bent on redistributing the very life-blood of America to their parasitic brethren, I figured I'd try to catch more flies with honey, and give my reader's (all three of them) a glimpse into what a true Libertarian Conservative future will look like, when we have finally rid ourselves of the Progressive scourge and their evil attempts to socialize our communities ,which they have the gall to call “societies”...we all know what that means Ivan!

Presenting... “Let Free Markets Ring”

RING RING RING

“911 Inc. What's your emergency?”

“Oh God! Help us! Our house is on fire!”

“Ok sir, just remain calm. We have you calling from 114 SW James St, is that correct?”

“Yes!...Donna! Get the kid's to the window!!!”

“Can I have your fire insurance carrier and account number please?”

“What!?!?!”

“Do you have fire insurance sir?”

“No!”

“Sir, are you eligible for Firecaid?”

“Oh god! The flames are climbing the stairs! Please help us!”

“Sir, if you are not insured or covered by Firecaid, there's really nothing we can do.”

“You can't just let us die!”

“That depends sir, do you have life insurance?”

“Yes! With Capital Insurance!”

“What's your account number sir?”

“Cough cough cough...oh god...its 299-15-667!”

“And your policy covers everyone there?”

“cough cough cough...hack...um, yes!”

“Ok, I see you're paid up, a rescue crew is on the way, if they get you out there be a $40 co-pay.”

“Thank God! Hey honey, keep the kids by the window, firemen are on the way!”

“I'm sorry sir, but you and your family are only covered for rescue, we'll have to let the house burn.”

“Goddamnit, just get us out of here!”

“There's no reason to be abusive sir, none of this would be necessary if you'd just bought fire insurance.”

“They dropped me! ...cough cough cough...My dad's house burnt down when I was six, so they said I was a preexisting risk!”

“Well sir, that's not my problem. You just hang on, try to breathe out the window, and the rescue crew will be with you shortly. Please have your co-pay ready and thank you for using 911 Inc.”

RING RING

“911 Inc. What's your emergency?”

“There's someone in the house with a gun.”

“Remain calm, is the gunman in the room with you ma'am?”

“No...I'm hiding in the closet. Please send help!”

“We have you at 24 Western Way, apartment 2, is this correct?”

“Yes!”

“Ma'am, I'll need your insurance carrier and account number.”

“Yes...oh god...I've got Crime and Mishap insurance with Freedom Limited, account number 22-45-1987...please, he's coming this way.”

“Try to remain calm, Law Enforcement Inc. is on the way. Do you have life insurance in case the gunman takes you hostage?”

“Its a different company, Western Value, account number 7364-834-253!”

“Alright ma'am. Our records show you'll fully covered, just keep your head down, and officers will be there any second...”

Easter Blog.

2010-04-07T04:17:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday, 2010.

Tonight I was made to feel very, very small.

I stumbled out of Embla's family summer house, too full of whiskey, barely recovered from my traditional Easter Vacation Flu, to smoke an obscenely uncalled for pipe, when I looked up.

Northern Lights.

Not the brightest or most colorful I've ever seen, not by a long shot. Dull enough that the jaded elders at the gathering poo-pooed them and went back inside to argue about what DVD to watch.

Me, I stood there staring. I've seen them before of course, but never so much at once. The whole sky, from horizon to horizon was a subtle, shifting, melding green water-color wash, spiraling above this lonely farmstead in walls a photon wide and a hundred miles tall before racing off at the speed-off-light-deciding-to-notice-magnetism across the sky, careening into itself, rebounding, rolling, waves on a sea that we've forgotten we can sail.

I sat there thinking that there may well come a day when we can all agree what the Northern Lights are, but I hope we never agree what they mean.

Tonight, to me, they meant this.

I'm a tiny little organism, crawling through my whiskey-soaked, tobacco-stained existence. I'm never going to see the Earth from orbit, my feet will never tread lunar soil. With a lifetime to spend and a fortune to propel me I would never glimpse but a fraction of the wonders of this planet, let alone worlds untraveled and unnamed.

But I wish to whatever power you believe in that we'd get off our collective asses and start!

We're better than this people. We are more than our economics and our petty nation-states, our dogmas and our superstitions, our fetishes and idols. Or at least we should be. We, the collective meaningful we, should be out there staring into the furnace of creation, planting fields in alien soil and singing in atmosphere so foreign that our melodies are remade into gravity's songs.

We need something truly heroic in our lives, in the bigger-than-all-of-us-because-it-is-all-of-us sense.

When my parents were children my grandparents generation sent men to the moon.

And then they stopped.

That was the one of the most underrated tragedies of the 20^th century. Yes, there was genocide and ecocide and war and pestilence and famine, but frankly that shit had all been done before and has been done since. Lamentable yes, heartrending yes, never fucking again yes, but not specific to the 20th. After finally witnessing its own utter cosmic insignificance, humankind decided to just give up and stay home.

Which brings me around, as it usually does, to me.

Who's going home.

Icelandic has these two words that form a brilliant symmetry; útþrá and heimþrá. Þrá means essentially “desire” or “longing” so heimþrá is the longing to go home, and with that, the love of home, and útþrá is its complementary opposite, the longing to discover, the love and desire for that which is outside of your experience. I'm currently feeling these same things in equal proportion.

And so should we all.

The love of one's home and the desire to explore are not contradictory, they are complimentary.

But people, especially lefty intellectual types and their complementary opposites on the right have long argued that space exploration is a waste of time and money, that we “have problems here on Earth to solve first”.

And they're right. To a point. We do have problems that need solving.

So let's fucking solve them already.

We have the necessary wisdom, knowledge, and will to feed, shelter, clothe, educate, care for, and encourage every single person on this planet. Don't even try to argue with me. We could do it if we wanted to.

We could make our home not a Utopian (nasty things Utopias, always with the fascist nastiness just under the surface) but so much better than it is now that our children's children would hardly believe it. It wouldn't be that hard. We have the technology, we have the systems, we have the theories of ethics, of politics, of economics, etc.

Which leaves me wondering, chicken or egg? Is the fact that we went to the fucking moon with far less computational power than the average IPhone going to wake people up to the fact that solving our earthly woes isn't about finding some new miraculous technology, or is finally getting off our asses and out into the cosmos finally going to convince people that we're all in this together so we might as well fix shit when its broken?

I honestly don't know. I can't tell you.

Because tonight I feel very, very small in the face of existence, and its glorious.

Couldn't help myself...

2010-03-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

“Please, where is line for second-class peoples?”

“HA?”

“Where is line for second-class peoples?”

“Talarðu ekki íslensku?”

“I am sorry, I not understand.”

“grrr...Ok, vhat is your question?”

“I am needing food, what line do I stand in please?”

“Vhat is your flokkur, you know, your rating?”

“Rating?”

“Your rating, yes, vhat is it?”

“I am sorry, I not know.”

“....útlendingar...OK, I vill explain. That line is for Icelanders, they get served first, don't stand there!”

“OK”

“The next line is for hálf-útlendingar. People who have Icelandic citizenship, but are not Icelandic. Ewen if they have been living here a long time, ewen if they speak Icelandic, own a home or business in Iceland, are married to an Icelander, and have half-Icelandic children. That is vhat the sign says. Íslenskir ríkisborgarar af erlendum uppruna. See? Not íslendingar.”

“Yes, I see.”

“The next line is for E.U. citizens, or as they are called in Icelandic, erlent vinnuafl. They should go home but some of them don't understand the Icelandic system and stay here. Are you a EU citizen?”

“Sadly no.”

“OK, then you must go in this line, see? It is the line for mostly brown not EU people who come here to steal our jobs, cheat our well-fare system, steal our men, abuse our women, create mafias, destroy our culture, and steal food from the mouths of our starving children.”

“But I am not coming here to do that!”

“Oh good. Ve keep trying to make them go home, but nothing vorks! They have to pay taxes for it, but they can't get bætur, ve can send them home if they don make more than minimum vage, or if they can't afford to pay fines instead of going to jail, and ve have a rule that they can only get a job if no Icelander vants it, and still they keep coming! But if you are not here to do that, vhy are you here?”

“I am coming here to teach dancing.”

“Vhy didn't you say so! See that much nicer line over there? That's the line for exotic foreigners who make Icelanders feel cosmopolitan and culturally hip. You belong in that line!”

“Why is they all so high?”

“THEY'RE DOING DÓP!?!?! ÚTLENSK GLÆPAGENGI!!!!!!!”

“I sorry, I mean to say why are they so tall?”

“Oh! Ha ha. Oops. That is also the line for foreign athletes.”

“Oh. I understanding. Thank you. Please can I ask one more questions?”

“OK.”

“The place with leather arm chairs and free champagne, who is that for?”

“Oh, well, that is for íslandsvinir.”

“Um...I am also friend of Iceland. Can I go there?”

“Vait a minute, I thought you don't speak íslenku!”

“I don't but the author does, he just forgot about it 'cause he ain't had enough coffee yet.”

“That would explain vhy all of the sudden your accent vent from generic foreigner to hillbilly Yankee.”

“Please to be regaining plot now?”

“Oh, yeah, sorrí. Anyvay, íslandvinir are rich or famous foreign people who like Iceland, or at least come to wisit once or tvice. Because they are famous, they make us look famous too, so ve give them special treatment.”

“Oh, like what please?”

“Vell, They never have any problem with getting wisas or vork permits, ewen if they are from outside of the EU, the police usually don't bust them for drug use, and if they are famous enough, ve vill grant them asylum or citizenship if some other country vants to charge them vith tax-fraud or something silly like that.”

“Really? Is allowed asylum seeking here?”

“Hahahahahaha. Ó mæ gadd nei! That is vhat that electrified cage ower there in the corner is for! Ha ha ha ha!”

“OK, I think I am understanding. Who is all the peoples in parkas though?”

“Those are tourists. Also the ones in skinny-jeans and ironic T-shirts. Ve like them, they come here and spend lots of money. They even tip! Sometimes they are so stupid they pay for other people's drinks! Best of all, they leave!”

“I see. Thank you so many for helping me. Could I ask one more thing?”

“Sure, vhy not?”

“Where can I be finding list of rooms to let?”

“Let?”

“Yes, am needing to find new place to live.”

“Oh, you mean “rent”, funny how you útlendingar can't even speak correct útlensku. Vhy do you need to find a new place to live?”

“There are homo-faggots living in the house!”

“Hólí sjitt! Ég trúi ekki að þú hafir sagt þetta! Hvað er þetta með ykkur fokking útlendinga! Þið eru öll svo helvíti fórdómafull!”

“What?”

"Never mind. Here is your order. Do you want kokteilsósa with your fries?"

I know, I know. Mean. Ranty. Negative. Stuff I was gonna stop doing...but c'om! It's funny!

Ideas I've had in the last few days...

2010-03-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

Ideas I've had in the last few days...

On those all-too-rare occasions when I get off my ass and haul said lump of lazy to the gym, one of my favorite bits of equipment is the good ol' fashioned rowing machine. I like the nearly-whole-body movement, and tend to just close my eyes and imagine I'm rowing over to Fox Island from my Uncle Paul's beach house just south of Purdy.

But for all the liking, there are a few things that could most definitely improve this fitness classic. I don't like how the chain-driven machines require you to pull in a completely straight line. If you try to put a twist into it, to work the sides of your lower back (which in my case are a pair of muffins that always come out on top) you can totally trash the machine. The other main problem is that while the act of pulling yourself forward does work out your legs and abs a little, you get almost no work from your pecs and triceps.

So I came up with a simple solution. Instead of the chain, or the older (and much less fun) design with the two hydraulic handles, you have a single pneumatic tube, with an adjustable intake and outtake valve, which would provide resistance on the push and the pull. Mount this on a ball-joint, so that you can twist, lift, and lower, and viola! You've got a rowing machine that provides a whole-body workout, won't get all messed up if you add a bit of rotation or twist (especially if the handle can be rotated vertical to horizontal), and is mechanically far simpler than most of the models on the market. Rpm, distance, etc could be calculated by a fan-wheel on the end.

The other idea I can't stop playing with whilst walking to work is based on my personal fascination with methane. I don't know why the idea of converting waste (yes, including poop) into fuel appeals to me so much, but it does.

Go ahead, get all Freudy on me.

Anyways, I've come up with a automated system that connects the kitchen sink drain via a garbage disposal unit, and the toilets in a house to a smallish (about the size of a large refrigerator) device that heats the waste slurry to the necessary temp, mixes it to the necessary consistency, and then allows anaerobic bacteria to break it down, producing bio-gas, which would then be filtered and pumped into a holding tank for use in cooking, hot-water systems, fireplaces, grills, etc. The waste would then be pumped right down the same sewage lines it would have run before. A second input could be mounted on the outside of the system (which could be installed up against the wall outside of a house) for yard waste (especially lawn clippings) to be added to the mix.

A small computer and a few sensors could make sure that the temperature staid optimal, and with a few automated valves said computer could add chemicals (mainly ammonia) to maintain the pH levels. All in all it would require only the occasional maintenance, not unlike a wood stove, heat pump, or septic tank.

Now, for a system like this to work, one would have to be really consciousness about putting all organic wastes down the garbage disposal (vegetable scraps, food scraps, etc) because human poo just doesn't have the right make up for massive methane production. You'd also have to come up with a way of breaking down the TP, as cellulose takes a long time to break down this way. Finally, you'd have to create a specially formulated toilet cleaner to prevent throwing the Ph off and/or killing off all the bacteria.

A family of four could probably cook most of their meals on a system like this, or enjoy a lot of fire-side reading, BBQ, or hot showers. For a house with a gas range, it would likely pay for itself in a year or two, and combined with other power-saving/producing features (solar cells, solar water heating, wind turbines, etc) it starts to make even more sense. I mean hell, if you buy a methane powered car you could never pay for gas again!

I'm souper, thanks for askin'!

2010-03-19T03:33:00.000-07:00

So once again with the segueing...

As mentioned at the end of the previous post, one of the strongest arguments one can make in favor of multiculturalism is simply that it tastes better. Food culture is often the last aspect of any immigrant's culture to wain, holding out longer than language or even religion, and as such serves as the unnamed diplomat of many a cultural minority. Good food breaks down barriers faster than bulldozers, I mean hell, even your most hardcore goosestepping skinhead idjit can't stop his mouth from watering in the presence of a really good kebab.

Which leads me to today's idea.

A few years ago, as more and more "ethnic" restaurants started springing up around Rvk, I began to ponder the question of "what one type of food unites humanity?".

'Course, as a Westerner, the first thing to spring to mind was the ol' staff of life, bread.

But that doesn't hold water, because most of Asia doesn't subsist on bread, neither does much of South America. So that's right out.

All the other starchy foods don't work, too much variety, everything from potatoes, rice, barley, wheat, corn, palm hearts, cassava, plantains...

See what I mean?

Eventually it hit me though, as I settled into a steaming bowl of Pho at a wonderful little eatery downtown.

Soup is the universal food. Well, soup/stew is the universal food. But really, the difference is only in the volume of liquid, so let's call it soup.

I mean think about it, nearly every culture, or geographic area can almost be defined by its traditional soup.

Think about, you've got Icelandic "meat soup" (a mutton stew), clam chowder in New England, mulligan stew in Ireland, bouillabaisse and onion soup in France, miso in Japan, menudo in Mexico, chile con carne in Texas, Navajo stew in New Mexico, gumbo in Louisiana, minestrone in Italy, borscht in most Slavic countries, ox-tail or won-ton soup in China, hell even desert cultures make soup .

Now, I love soup, be it something "exotic" like Looz Shorba or something as ubiquitous as Jewish penicillin (otherwise known as chicken noodle soup).

Which stirred up my bubbling imagination until out came the steamy goodness of an idea for a restaurant, which would feature a rotating menu of world soups, breads, and salads, owned and operated as a co-op, and making a point of offering working scholarships/internships to exchange students (so long as they're willing to share soup recipes).

Such an establishment could offer relatively inexpensive food (as soup is mostly water, milk, etc) which would be a boon to the Rvk food scene, as well as serving as a center for inter-cultural exchange.

I wanted to call it "The World Headquarters for the International Republic of Soup".

'Cause eateries with really long names make me laugh.

Silly idea, I know.

But no more silly than a Robin Hood themed pizza place....

Happy Paddy Day!!!

2010-03-17T03:43:00.000-07:00

Happy Paddy Day!

I love Paddy Day.

Even though I'm not at all Irish, and have never been to Ireland (much to my regret).

I listen to a lot of Irish music, even play some (mandolin and tin-whistle), and many of my favorite movies hail from the Emerald Isle (The War of the Buttons, The Van, The Snapper, The Commitments, Waking Ned), as does the eternal goodnesses known as stout, soda bread, and corned beef and cabbage.

It's also my pops b-day (Happy 60th Popsicle!) which is funny, considering that he and all his siblings have saint's names, but my dearly departed Granny wasn't much a fan of Eire so he got named Laurence (after the patron saint of Quebec?) instead.

So I'm gonna go all out.

Which I usually do for fun holidays, like Halloween, New Year's Eve, Thanksgiving, and pretty much anything involving large amounts of alcohol and/or fireworks.

Problem is, there just aren't enough of these holidays here on the Lava lump, and most of them are bunched up in the mid winter.

So I propose a few new holidays.

For starters, I think that a general holiday (vacation for all!) should be declared on March 2nd. This would allow us to go out and properly celebrate March 1rst, BEER DAY, and joyously pour libations to commemorate the glorious day when beer was finally legalized on the Lava Lump.

I also like the idea of declaring a holiday (consisting of impromptu street parties) to occur whenever the first snow of the year hits.

Likewise, the first day that the temp hits 10C should be celebrated in a like manner.

The 20th of January should be celebrated by improvised percussion jams and bonfires to honor the all too rare spirit of insurrection.

Both solstices should be celebrated as well, with liquor.

Talk Like a Pirate Day should be celebrated with costumes, rum, and fireworks.

Finally, I think there should be an Icelandic holiday/festival devoted to nybuar (immigrants) complete with a parade, concerts, and most importantly, FOOD!

Because multiculturalism just tastes better!

Just a quick follow up...

2010-03-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

"So" I hear my imaginary readers asking "Just what are you going to with all that scrap paper and stuff if Sorpa started paying for people to recycle it?"

Simple. Just make charcoal outta it.

Charcoal is the black residue consisting of impure carbon obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood, sugar, bone char, or other substances in the absence of oxygen (see pyrolysis, char and biochar). The resulting soft, brittle, lightweight, black, porous material resembles coal and is 50% to 95% carbon with the remainder consisting of volatile chemicals and ash.

Thank you Wikipedia!

Now, making charcoal is very polluting because those "volatile constituents" are even worse greenhouse gases then the CO2 you produce just by burning the stuff all the way through. Happily, those same volatile hydrocarbons are themselves flammable, and can be captured and used as fuel, as in the case of wood gas cars.

So you take all this biomass (old newspaper, grass clippings, scrap timber, tree cuttings, old Xmas bushes, etc), and make charcoal briquettes out of it while bottling the gas. You could like run the entire plant off of the heat produced by the incomplete combustion, say by capturing it to run a steam turbine.

"But why would anyone go through all that trouble?" I hear my fictitious readers ponder.

Because Icelanders friggin' love to BBQ! They spend a lot of money to fuel their burnt meat habit!

You could sell the briquettes to people with standard grills, and the wood gas to people with gas grills, feeding the Icelandic appetite for charred sheep flesh whilst simultaneously cutting way down on the carbon footprint of the current trade, which creates charcoal without harnessing the wood gas, then ships it in petroleum powered vehicles across the planet to be burnt here. In other words, this system would bind up Bigfoot's feet and stuff 'em into a pair of ballet slippers.

New and improved!

2010-03-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

“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....

Tarred and Feathered....

2010-03-08T03:49:00.000-08:00

Just to be clear, this is a critical little rant. I know. I’m not attempting to say that anywhere else is any better or worse, I’m not saying that what I’m ranting about applies equally to all Icelanders and residents of Iceland, and I know full well that it doesn’t apply at all to some of them. That said, the more I’ve pondered, the more I begin to see certain patterns, and those patterns call out for attention. Hell, considering I've lived more of my adult life on the Lava Lump than many of my Lava Lumpian friends, many of these criticisms apply to me as well. So blast me if you want. Tell me “Iceland love it or leave it” (I do and I am), get in my face, but at least think about your responses before going all “best í heimi!” on my ass.

Everything I Needed to Know About Iceland I Learned in Grunnskoli.

#1. Cry “Einelti”!

It works like this: Anytime you get caught or called out for doing something wrong, hurting another kid, employee, fellow citizen, spitting on people, stealing, vandalizing, using ethic/homophobic/sexual slurs, telling lies, running a massive Ponsi-scheme and bankrupting the entire country, using your company credit card for a million or so’s worth of lapdances, whatever, immediately complain that you are the victim of einelti. It’s not your fault; everyone is out to get you.

#2. Actions have no consequences!

Following from rule number one, no one is ever to be held accountable for their actions by any meaningful means, as to do so would be to leggja einhver í einelti, and that is bad. Therefore no one can be sent home for bad behavior (they have a right to stay, no matter how often they attack other children and staff, no matter how much damage they do to the building, no matter how often they run away, or run off with their investors money, or call the police from the cell phone mommy and daddy gave them that they are not allowed to bring to school to make false reports) nor can they be given a time-out (this is “emotionally scarring”), sent outside (it makes outside play into a punishment), denied access to toys or activities (einelti einelti einelti!) or any other direct consequence. Likewise, it is totally unfair to call their parents, who are very busy making money and shouldn’t be bothered with mean bullies who want to tattle on children. Any attempt by other children to shun a child who consistently makes life miserable for them is totally unacceptable. Bullies have the right to disrupt, annoy and destroy at will, and if otherwise well-behaved children try to exclude them, then the bully is the victim.

#3. Bad behavior is sooooo cute!

In order to avoid dealing with the consequences of #1 and #2, it is very important to make such behavior an acceptable, even cherished part of childhood. “Ah, will you look and little Nonni, he’s hurling wooden blocks at everyone in the room because other children crying is funny, ahhh how cute!” “The cutest thing happened today! Jón defrauded a bunch of investors and used their money to buy his own private plane!” “Little Didda just called me a stupid helvítis leiðinlegur fokking homma pólverja!* And spit on me! Kids say the darnedest things!”

*See rule #13

#4. Getting there first is all that matters!

Anytime there is a line, push, shove, kick, or randomly overtake at unsafe speeds your way to the front. Waiting your turn is for lúsers, besides, if you wait your turn other kids might get something before you do! That means they’ll be better than you for the entire time it takes you to get to the front of the line! Being first in line means you’re better than everyone behind you, and being better than everyone else is really important, I mean, how else are you going to get in Séð og heyrt, so make the most of it by doing whatever you can to prolong your time there. Change your mind, make the others wait while you run off to get something, and if someone else gets served while you’re no-longer in line, throw a fit. Only someone with no self-esteem would just move to the back of the line after leaving it…

#5. I think I’m awesome, therefore I am!

Because children have such fragile self-esteem, it is important to never ever criticize or correct them. Instead, consistently tell them that everything they do is awesome! Purposely loose any game you play with them, and then tell them how awesome they are. Compliment everything they do, even if it’s something rude, disrespectful, stupid, or harmful. This way they grow up convinced of their own talent and genius, even when they don’t have any. If worst comes to worst, remind them that at least they were born in Iceland, which automatically makes them better than everyone else. I mean, there’s only one Iceland, and it’s at the top of the map, totally looking down on all those útlendingar.

This is the real reason why Iceland is a haven of sorts for famous foreigners. It’s not that Icelanders don’t care that Holywood celebs are famous, its that to admit that they do would be to admit that someone is somehow more deserving of attention than themselves, and that simply cannot be. I mean, what’s a few Oscars compared to being born in Hólmavík?

Which leads us to…*

#6. If I lost its ‘cause you cheated!

I am awesome. I am the best soccer player ever, everything I do is gold, I am the smartest, coolest, toughest, most athletic, artistic, brilliant little baby Einstein around. I pull more business acumen out of my ass than Wall Street can scrape together in a century. I cannot loose. It is impossible. Therefore if I loose, you cheated, and because you cheated I can cry, scream, and beat the shit out of you and anyone who gets in my way. Nothing I do is my fault, unless it’s something cool, in which case it’s all me. Nobody helped. Totally my idea. Get the fuck out of my spotlight!

#7. It’s not cheating/bullying/stealing/etc when I do it!

If you want something, go for it! By any means necessary! That other kid looks like he’s going to score a goal against you? Punch him! That girl’s got cooler shoes than you? Steal ‘em! Your investment firm is failing and people are like, actually demanding to make money on their investments? Take the money and run! People are protesting against your corrupt and incompetent rule? Gas the fuckers! You are the most perfect, bestest little kid ever, therefore everything and anything you do is justified!

#8. A pinch of prevention is worth a pound of whining!

Nothing is more leiðinlegt than horrible grown-ups telling you you shouldn’t do something. Anytime anyone stops you from doing something totally cool and fun, like trying to jump from the roof of the school, or hanging over the edge of a banister to drop stones on the people below, or loaning yourself money from your own bank to buy shares in your own bank artificially inflating the stock price causing a major finacial collaspe, or running off of the playground into a busy street, or playing with matches in the basement, or bringing a knife to school, or trying to bash the other kids´ heads in with a jump-rope tied to a brick, or setting off homemade pipebombs on the playground or handing communal property like fisheries and banks over to cronies for political faovors, make sure to scream at them, insult them, wail like a banshee, and complain to your parents and the bosses about how grímmt og ótrúlega strangt said grownups are. Its your right to harm yourself and others, dammit!

#9. What´s mine is mine, what´s yours is mine!

Having more stuff than other kids makes you better than them. It doesn’t matter what stuff it is. Do anything in your power to get more stuff. Beg and whine. Steal and cheat. If worse comes to worse, beat up and take. It doesn´t matter if its total useless junk. If some kid finds an empty coke can on the play ground, you have to have two empty coke cans! Either that or destroy his coke can! If some other kid has a huge gas-guzzling Hummer, you need three! Otherwise they’re better than you! If you can´t afford lots of stuff, just make sure to never part with anything. Fill your closet, garage, storage container, summer house, etc with piles of things you have no use for. Under no circumstances should any of this be given to the needy. The needy only exist í útlendum, and anyone who says they’re needy is just a lúser trying to take advantage.

Likewise, anything held in common (or not clearly marked as belonging to someone) is totally worthless, until you either own it, or at least control access to it. If you´re really smart and want something held in common, like say a particular doll or maybe a healthcare system, then what you do is you pretend not to like it, say it sucks, maybe trash it a bit when no one is looking. Then when its worn out and forgotten, you can usually get ahold of it one way or another.

#10. If its not competitive, its not worth doing!

Winning is everything. Why the heck would anyone do anything unless they can brag about it, or look down on all the lúsers? Make life a game! But, you know, a real game, one where some people (Me! Me! Me!) are singled out as winners, and most are loosers. Make sure there is some sort of prize on offer as well. There´s no point to playing if there isn´t a prize at the end. Also, make sure that you only take part in games you know you´ll win. Loose once and you’re always a looser. The only exception is if your competeing against útlendingar, in which case coming in second or third is better than winning, because a) everyone knows that they form gangs that stick together and support each other no matter how much better you are, and b) if you won you’d have to host, and “hosting” is just another word for “spending time and resources on stuff for other people”. Only real lúsers do that!

#11. Being outside sucks!

Nature is boring, outside sucks. Even if the weather is good. I mean, kom onn maður, its free for fuck´s sake! Everyone knows that anything free isn´t worth anything! It´s totally more fun to play football inside, and its not like the playground has a Playstation. The only good reason to be outside is if you’re using some sort of wheeled vehicle, zipping around for no other good reason than to zip around. Alone. So you can be sure that you are in charge. If you have to go outside, make sure to dress as inappriately as possible for the weather. Fashion trumps survival after all. Blue is the new fake tan! Also, as an adendum, trees suck! Their only purpose is to get in our way. This is why you should rip the limbs off of them whenever possible. Also, that way you have a stick, and other kids don´t, making you both cooler, and better able to enforce your will than the other kids. Plus, its okay to destroy trees. Nobody owns them.

#12. Cleaning up is someone else’s job!

There are two kinds of people in the world. Cool, hip, powerful, rich people who make messes, and poor, lame, disenfranchised, people who clean up. Because no one wants to be part of the latter group, no one should ever be forced to clean up thier own mess. Not making a mess in the first place is also unacceptable. I mean, talk about torture, you expect me to carry this can/bottle/bag/wrapper/cigarette butt/pile of spent fireworks all the way to the next trash can!?!? If the visual evidence on my consumption isn’t there for all to see, how will people know how much cool stuff I consume? Also, copious amounts of litter and tagging on every concieveable surface is cool, it makes Reykjavik look like some tuffarahverfi í útlendum. Not that anyone is more tuf than Icelanders.

#13. If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it in útlensku!

If you feel the need to say something unfortunate, say it in útlensku. After all, all Icelanders speak fluent útlensku, unlike útlendingar who are genetically incapable of learning the Language of Awesome. Hell, they even need Icelanders’ help with their own language! If you say it in útlensku then you’re free and clear. Calling a teacher a helvitis aumingi will get you in trouble, but shouting “Fuck you you fucking donkey-sucking gaybag cunt!”* will garner you compliments on your fluent use of útlensku! Likewise, informing someone that ‘We will not pay” is not the same thing as telling someone “Við borgum ekki”, it’s all a misunderstanding based on foreigners not understanding their own language.

*Actual quote. From a seven-year-old. I shit you not!

#14. Heima er bezt!

Just as what one says to outlanders and what one says to Icelanders bares no comparison, what one does in Iceland and what one does in Útland are two totally different things. Being drunk for days on end is ok in Ibiza, just like spending millions on lap-dances is fine in Zurich. Just like its OK to behave badly at someone else's house, as long as mommy and daddy aren't there. That being said, one shouldn’t ever be punished for anything done away from home, because they are mean there. Icelanders who do bad things away from home should be brought back, given a hug and some hot chocolate and sent to bed. Úlendingar who do bad things in Iceland should be sent home to be raped and beaten in prisons that are far too mean for Icelanders.

#15. Moderation is for lúsers!

If something is worth doing, its worth overdoing. TV is good, TV with ten thousand channels is better, especially if you have your own computer to chat on while you watch and a ceiling high-pile of video games to play when there's nothing on TV. If a tan is good, being orange year-round is all kinds of awesome. If being in shape is good, working out seven days a week and starving yourself is the only way to go! If having enough is good, having too much is better! If football is fun, don’t do anything else, or talk about anything else, or care about anything else!

There are of course exceptions. For instance, you shouldn’t have candy at school, or drink during the work week. Not one bite! Not one beer! That sort of thing is reserved for weekends, when you can go to the sjoppa and buy a bag of candy the size of your head so that momma og pabbi can sleep off the previous night’s binge drinking.

It's 2010! Where's my f#@$#ing jet pack!?!?!

2010-01-29T02:56:00.000-08:00

Anywho.

New Year, first blog of. Won't be long 'cause I'm busy. I'm currently engrossed in writing what started off as a short story and is slowly turning into a novella about an American who moves to Iceland and inadvertently kick starts a minor apocalypse by releasing a bunch of Lovecraftian huldufolk.

When not obsessing on that, I'm trying to decide the moment and the manner in which I will be heading back to far Cascadia to try to experience the land of my birth as an sane adult, something I've never really done.

There are 4 options on that. Option the first is to be smart, save up as much as possible, take August off (paid vacay) to tie up loose ends and jet home in September. Option the second is to save up as much as possible, go hang with the Spanish contingent outside of Logrono for the summer and fly home in September. Option the third is pretty much the same except that I bum around Europe for a month or two, doing the grand tour and all.

Then there's option the fourth. The option that scares the crap outa me while twitterpating me at the same time. Ship most of my stuff home in May. Fly to Boston. Get gear together. Start with my bike's back tire in the Massachusetts's Bay, hook up to the Northern Tier Trail, and don't stop until my front tire hits Commencement Bay in Tacoma. I have no idea if I'd be physically capable, mentally capable, or financially capable of doing this. But I want to. Badly.

'Course, all of this is dependent on my getting a job in Tumchuck Ilhallee. Which isn't exactly easy at the moment, so I'm dusting off the ol' resume' and trying to network out to friends and fam that might be able to hook me up.

That said, I need to leave Iceland for a while. Surprisingly it not the depression, the politics, the xenophobia, or the poverty that's driving it. It's just straight up homesickness.

I've dreamt Washington for the last two weeks. Vivid, evocative dreams that leave me aching for a home that hasn't been "home" for nigh-on 16 years.

Time to go.

Immigrants Wronged

2009-12-03T14:25:00.000-08:00

Update: The Office of Foreigner Affairs has stated that Ben Frost's application for permanent residence was denied, but that he can continue here on a renewed temporary residence permit The fact that there was that much confusion surrounding the issue kinda proves my point, and I can't help but think that if Mr. Frost were less well known and the story hadn't been published he would likely not have gotten to renew his temp permit either...

It’s one of those situations that would make Kafka ask “Are you all high or something?”. More than a year on from the collapse of the Icelandic economy, hardly a charge has been brought, nary a report published regarding what has to be counted as one of the biggest, most blatant con jobs history.

The institutions responsible for figuring out what happened, why it happened, and who profited from it happening all claim to be under funded and swamped, and any information they do have is kept secret, either locked in the offices of Parliament or banned from publication because of bankaleynd. The only information released this week was the announcement that much of the information gathered will not be released for up to 80 years because it involves “personal information” i.e. salaries and bank statements.

Meanwhile young people, many of them well-educated family folk, are leaving the country to look for greener pastures in the outlands, causing the media to bemoan the brain drain and shrinking size of a country which just recently managed to spawn its way over the 300,000 mark.

At the same time an organization has sprung up that vows to physically prevent people from being evicted from their homes due to repossession orders, and the papers are a buzz with tales of how Icelandic immigration laws are being used to keep non-EU immigrants trapped in abusive marriages.

So people are bailing, and the people who caused them to bail are protected by banking laws that prevent their financial information from being made public, or even being made readily available to the people investigating the collapse. People facing the likelihood of loosing their homes are being offered a radical form of help, and women victimized twice over, once by their spouses and once by the state are finally getting a fair hearing.

At the same time, buried in the back section of Mogginn, we learn that a tax-paying, self-employed (he runs a recording studio amongst other things), home owning Australian father of an Icelandic child by the name of Ben Frost is being deported after he was denied a renewal for his residency.

The reason?

He didn’t earn enough money his first year in the country.

Now, this begs the question, if the banksters that sunk the Icetanic are protected by laws that make it massively difficult, expensive, and time consuming to get at their financial data, how come this poor guy’s finances are an open book to the Office of Foreigner Persecu…I mean “Affairs “?

And why would said office move to deport a tax-paying, home-owning, Icelandic child-raising man who has actually managed to make a living as an artist (and hence, as he states in the article cannot be accused of “stealing jobs from Icelanders”) who wants to stay here? Why further decrease the State’s tax base, let alone deprive a child of access to their father? Isn’t it a tad odd that the same government that wails about Icelandic families being forced to move abroad for economic reasons sees fit to expel someone who wants to stay and is contributing to the tax rolls? Where are the people offering to defend him from being evicted not only from his house, but from his business, his family, and his work? Where is the media buzz about this guy being fucked over by immigration law?

The only answer I can come up with is the same one I’ve ranted about before, namely that the Office of Foreigner Affairs, formerly the Office of Foreigner Surveillance, has an unwritten policy of using any means at its disposal to deport as many non-EU immigrants as they can. I don’t know if it’s because they’re miffed at not being able to easily deport EU immigrants, or if they just figure that non-EU equals “dirty brown people”, or if they’re just balls-out equal-opportunity xenophobes. Either way, it’s not just wrong, its stupid.

Predictable, but stupid.

One of the first symptoms of economic downturn tends to be scapegoating foreigners for “stealing jobs” or “free-loading on benefits”. As for the first, most of the immigrants that are still here are working at the same kind of jobs we had during those flat-screen colored Hummer-scented days of yore, i.e. the jobs Icelanders didn’t want, and judging from the problems the Social Services and other organizations that pay low wages for under-appreciated work are having rehiring after thousands of foreign workers that left the country over the last year, they still don’t want.

As for “free-loading on benefits”, no matter what the published regulations say, non-EU immigrants can’t even apply for social benefits, like rent support, unemployment, or student loans, without calling down the full fury of the authorities on their heads. Even EU immigrants, who legally have the right to benefits are regularly denied them via various bureaucratic means (like a couple I know that was denied rent-support because the apartment they rent “did not fulfill the requirements” despite the fact that it did last year, when it was rented out to Icelanders).

So what should we do about this? Essentially we have an institution that collectively acts to persecute people for violations of rules that they do their damnedest not to share, or even write down, who’s decisions are made in nigh-secrecy and who’s rulings cannot be appealed, backed up by a long tradition of official xenophobia (including everything from the “special understanding” that kept black servicemen off the NATO base for years, denying Jewish refugees asylum during WWII and then denying “Arab” refugees asylum due to the wars the government pledged support for, or even the fact that the law legalizing the murder of “Turks” was still on the books until the 90’s).

In an ethical society, such an institution would be shut down; it’s ethically defensible functions shifted to a new organization unpolluted by its predecessor, and all the cases, laws, and regulations reviewed. The very fact that this institution operates under the offices of the newly renamed Ministry of Justice and Human Rights is so full of irony that you could make nails out of it.

But that’s not going to happen here. Leaving aside the fact that the ministry in question once (and for all anyone seems to know still does) served as a cover for a domestic intelligence operation (something which no elected official with an ounce of sense or a hint of bone in the closet will tangle with), the fact is that their actions are viewed by a large segment of the population here as not only useful, but right.

There is xenophobia here, even though few will admit to it. I mean, look at the news over the last few years. There have been many reported cases of tax-paying law-abiding immigrants being deported on a technicality, and likely a great many that went unreported. There is the fact that Iceland as a rule simply will not accept asylum-seekers, no matter the justness of the refugee’s claims. Foreign activists have been placed under surveillance, deported or threaten with deportation for protesting, while Icelandic hate-groups with ties to violent skin-head organizations are written off as “just confused teenagers”. The media continues to make sure to report the nationality of anyone accused of or charged with a crime, unless they’re Icelandic (as special exception is made for “technical” Icelanders, they get reported as an “Icelandic citizen of such-and-such descent”), giving the impression that all criminals are foreign, and hence all foreigners criminal.

This sort of engrained thinking is not going to change overnight and revamping and or totally overhauling the Office of Foreigner Affairs is nowhere near a priority in Parliament or society right now.

So what to do?

I have a cunning plan.

We put the rabid xenophobic bureaucrats to work for us. All we have to do is revoke the banksters citizenship, and maybe change a few names. Next thing you know the cops will be kicking down their doors, handcuffing them, taking all their money and documents as “evidence”, (after all, foreigners have no right to financial privacy or due-process in open court, at least when they are being persecuted by the Office of Foreigner Affairs) and before the banksters can say “boo” they’ll be deported to one of the don’t-call-it-a-concentration-camp asylum shantytowns in Greece, although they might have just enough time to hunger-strike in front of the police station.

Good riddance to bad rubbish and all that.

But of course, because the banksters are well connected to the powers that were and the powers that are, such an action would inspire a tidal wave of criticism and investigation, in all likelihood resulting in a top-to-bottom overhaul of the office, if not the creation of a totally new one. After all, we can’t have a state institution running around willy-nilly looking into people’s finances, detaining them at whim, or expelling them from the island at a moment’s notice. Such behavior would be roundly condemned and major changes made.

See, everybody wins in my world…

But we don’t live in my world. Which is sad, and not just due to this world’s worrying lack of Salma Hayek look-a-likes.

So the Aussie musician will probably be deported. So will I, eventually. So will a lot of good people who came here to try to make a life for themselves, who skimped and saved, got by on less than their Icelandic peers, with less support and more opposition from a government that does its damnedest to regulate us into a powerless pool of cheap labor and convenient scapegoats.

The stupidity of expelling productive people, whether for reasons of xenophobia, economics, politics, or simple bloody minded bureaucracy galls. The fact that it is accepted by so many, and actively pursued by the powers that be calls out for correction.

Ministry of Justice and Human Rights my ass…

Aiming High

2009-11-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

So what the hell. I'll post a Xmas list. Who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky and some bored rich person will see fit to pity-gift me.

Naw. I mean, I've got most of what I need. Those things that I want I can probably get on my own, and frankly, I'm learning that large amounts of stuff just isn't the way I roll yo.

That being said, this Xmas I have a couple of things I really want, namely a portable hard-drive thingy that you can hook up to the TV (with a remote). I want this because it will allow me to put all my DVD's into a little easy to access package, hence opening up lots of room for more books.

I'm not going to hold my breathe for that one.

So cheap and nerdy it is:

DVDs:

Second season Dark Angel
Buffy the Vampire Slayer box set
Stargate SG1 seasons 2-7
Watchmen

House Stuff:

Black or steel electric kettle
Black, dark blue, dark green bed sheets, pillow cases, duvet covers
Roll up yoga mat
IKEA gift certificate

Clothes:

Dark snow boots size 46
leather gloves

Books:
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher except "Small Favor" (have it all ready)
Any Brian Jaques Redwall books to come out in the last two years.
"The Hanged Man" by Francesca Lea Bloc
"Waking the Moon", "Aestival Tide", and "Black Light" by Elisabeth Hand

Random geek stuff:

A sporran
Sword, spear, axe, shield anything that says "I read way too much fantasy".
a bodhrán

I reserve the right to amend this list if it starts to look like anyone is buying this stuff for me.

The Immigrant Song

2009-11-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

When I first came to Icelandic back in ´94, everyone and their mothers insisted on informing me that Led Zeppelin´s 'Immigrant Song' was about Iceland.

Hence this silly little parody...

Ahhh ahh ahh ahh!

Ahh ahh ahh ahh!>We come from the land of the snow and ice

Where they sell the beer for too high a price!

The failure of our banks

Will drive our youth

To new lands

Flat screens and Hummers

Borrowing and buying

Glitnir I am blaming you!

And so we shop

At the discount store

Our only goal to leave these

Bankrupt shores!

Ahhh ahh ahh ahh!

We come from the land of the ice and snow

Where the market suck and bankers blow!

How soft their heads, so dumb

Those banskter boys of yore,

Of how they claimed to know their shit,

We all went overboard!

And so we weep, as we leave these shores

Our only hope to work Canadian stores!

Or maybe we’ll rise up, reclaim all these ruins

Cause pots and pans could win the day, despite the useless choosin!

Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ahh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh

Who knew I needed to learn Chinese?

2009-10-07T05:06:00.000-07:00

So even though there is little or no mention of it in the course catalog, it turns out that for at least two (possibly three or four) of the required classes for the MA program I signed up for require a working knowledge of calculus.

So, yeah, FAIL!

Now, I know I'll be accused of being over-dramatic, or people will continue as they have been to tell me that it will "all work out" and that I "just need a little help".

Bullshit.

It's not that I'm ungrateful for the attempts at pepping me up, its just that I am aware of my own failings.

Math is one of them. A big one.

In every other subject I've ever studied, I've always had that "eureka" moment, that moment when things fell into place and suddenly I understood what I was learning.

Not so with math.

Ever since I can remember it has been immensely difficult, from my multiplication tables up to the basic trig I got forced into in high school. Math has always been a struggle, a constant reworking of problems that I constantly got wrong, wrestling with concepts that slid away from my comprehension like ice off a hot griddle.

That would have been ok, I guess. Everyone has something they find difficult, nigh impossible to get. For some its literature, for some its history, for others its science, and for some its languages. Fine.

But the thing is, because I was an exceptionally good student, not only was I not allowed to simply coast through math with a high D (I was one of those kids who if I went home with an A got asked why I hadn't managed an A+), but it was simply assumed that not only would I be good at math, but that I'd like it as well.

I don't. I have full on panic-attacks when faced with equations. Hell, I've given up asking people to tutor me because I always wind up yelling at them.

Which just piled shit on top of the dung sandwich I had to chew every time a required math class raised its head.

After failing (miserably, repeatedly) at the last basic algebra class I had in 1997, I purposely and successfully avoided all math-related study, and I did very well.

After all, its not like math is something I use a lot in my daily life. I've never encountered an instance where my fiances were complicated enough to justify the use of a spreadsheet, and hence never learned how to use one. I've never (outside of mandatory math classes) had to solve an equation for anything.

And now its come back to haunt me.

Thing is, I'm still getting the same assumptions. "Oh, you're a smart guy, this will be no problem for you!" they say. "Don't worry, with a little extra help you'll do fine!"

Don't even get me started on how much I hate it when people say "just..." and "simply...." before launching into a spiel of what for me might as well be Mandarin.

I mean, yeah, you can learn Chinese literature without speaking Chinese, in translation. But you can't just expect someone in a Chinese lit class to then magically be able to compose poetry in Mandarin.

Which brings me to my point.

If you are going to have upper-level math a pre-requisite fine. But you should FUCKING TELL PEOPLE BEFOREHAND!

If I had known that calculus was a requirement for this program, I would have either A: not gone into this program, or if I thought it worth the time and effort B: gone back to some remedial night-school for 4 years or so until I could at least fake competence in the subject.

Instead I've essentially wasted most of my tuition and book money on a course of study that I cannot complete to any sort of decent standard without a further massive investment in time, money, and effort.

All to learn enough math to pass a required course so that I can go on to pursue studies in largely non-mathematical fields.

So...

If we let "x" equal my chances of passing this class as things stand, and "y" equal the amount of effort necessary to ensure passing the class, we get

[(x+job+stress+failure)/(y+costs+stress+years of study to the power of N)}

if we then graph that on the chart, you'll find the answer is right between "fuck"to the power of "ing" and "no" to the power of "way".

Adding a z axis to locate this point in three-dimensional space yeilds a location right next to a snowball in hell.

Corporate concubine...

2009-09-23T03:10:00.000-07:00

Its one thing to be a corporate whore.

Sure, I oppose to whoring one's self out to a corp (FYI, as opposed to wage slavery, corporate whoring implies a servile, ass-kissing sort of debasement), but there is something worse.

I call it being a corporate concubine. That's when you are force to work for (i.e. "blow") a corporation/for-profit institution for free.

Like in one of the classes I'm taking right now.

5 groups of graduate students are all working on creating a sustainability plan for Landsvirkjun (the private/public corporation responsible for almost all dams and power plants in Iceland), meeting with officials of the company and then trying to sell them our ideas, which they will get copies of, for free.

They aren't paying us. They can use our ideas at will. And if we refuse to take part, we may fail the class.

In other words, we are giving valuable time, effort, and product to a for profit organization in order to receive a numerical estimate of our abilities, based on the judgement of someone who sees nothing wrong with such an arrangement.

How much does that suck?

The paper I turned in...

2009-09-22T04:06:00.000-07:00

Samuel Levesque
Position Paper 1: Taking Sides

On the issue of whether or not sustainable development is compatible with human welfare my answer is a resounding “yes”, though not for any of the reasons put forward by Dinah M. Payne, Cecily A. Raiborn, or Ronald Bailey. While the authors question if sustainable development is compatible with human welfare, they fail to ask if industrialized capitalist corporatism is compatible with sustainable development.
Both articles are based on the premise that Globalist corporate capitalism and the so-called free market are inevitable, unchangeable, and therefore a given. While Bailey argues that continuing the current course of development will result in the system curing the very ills it produces, Raiborn and Payne argue that while the system produces ills, it can be reformed from within and without into a higher-minded force for ecological and social good. In essence Raiborn and Payne argue for the physician to heal himself, where as Bailey argues that smoking cures cancer.

It is my contention that any system in which a relative few control the vast majority of available resources in order to further profit those who own shares of said resources will never lead to a socially just, ecologically sound, and economically prosperous future for the vast majority of humanity. Instead the continued accumulation of resources necessary for life (land/soil, water, food, etc) into the hands of a select elite will result in a continuance of manufactured scarcity (which drives up profits) and manufactured needs (which increase consumption and drive up pollution) with all the human and ecological degradation that such a system entails, no matter how sustainable the practices of individual institutions become.
Far from accepting the argument that industrialism, let alone capitalist industrialism is a boon to mankind, and that somehow if left unchecked will correct the very problems it causes, I contend that by their very structures industrialism and capitalism (in particular corporatism) are themselves detrimental to human welfare and therefore have no real role in sustainable development.

In my view what is needed is not a tweak to the existing system, but a fundamental shift in how humanity supplies its basic needs, with an aim to meet those needs (as well as most of our less destructive wants) while repairing or restoring as much ecological vitality as possible. This happy situation can be realized not by simply changing the goods mass produced and the technical processes that produce them, but by changing the very nature of production. As E.F. Schumacher once put it, want is needed is not more mass production, but more “production by the masses”.

Small-scale, decentralized local production of the sort championed by Schumacher, Jerry Mander, Kirkpatrick Sales, and even Gandhi is far more likely to be ecologically sound (as it does not “export” its pollution over the horizon), egalitarian (see Mander’s In the Absence of the Sacred), and adaptable than massive corporate structures, not to mention more profitable to those involved (if one counts profit as production for one’s own use) as there are no capitalist middlemen harvesting the fruits of other’s labor. The kind of top-down profit-driven “development” championed by the authors of both articles will only lead to continued ecological damage, just as top-down ideologically driven “reform” could very well lead to the sort inequality and enforced poverty that Bailey fears. Global sustainability must begin small-scale, decentralized, and free of hierarchal institutions to be adaptable to local ecosystems, populations, and economies.

Schumacher, E.F. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Harper and Row, New York. 1975.

Mander, Jerry. In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survial of the Indian Nations. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco. 1991

Sales, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against the Future: Lessons for the Computer Age. Perseus Publishing, Cambridge. 1995.

“Gandhian Economics” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhian_economics

The paper I wanted to write...

2009-09-22T03:17:00.000-07:00

>Samuel Levesque

Position Paper 1: Taking Sides

On the issue of whether or not sustainable development is compatible with human welfare my answer is a resounding “yes”, though not for any of the reasons put forward by Dinah M. Payne, Cecily A. Raiborn, or Ronald Baily. While the authors question if sustainable development is compatible with human welfare, they fail to ask if industrialized capitalist corporatism is compatible with sustainable development.

Both articles are based on the premise that Globalist corporate capitalism and the so-called free market are inevitable, unchangeable, and therefore a given. While Baily argues that continuing the current course of development will result in the system curing the very ills it produces, Raiborn and Payne argue that while the system produces ills, it can be reformed from within and without into a higher-minded force for ecological and social good. In essence Raiborn and Payne argue for the physician to heal himself, where as Baily argues that smoking cures cancer.

It is my contention that any system in which a relative few control the vast majority of available resources in order to further profit those who own shares of said resources will never lead to a socially just, ecologically sound, and economically prosperous future for the vast majority of humanity. Instead the continued accumulation of resources necessary for life (land/soil, water, food, etc) into the hands of a select elite will result in a continuance of manufactured scarcity (which drives up profits) and manufactured needs (which increase consumption and drive up pollution) with all the human and ecological degradation that such a system entails, no matter how sustainable the practices of individual institutions become.

From my point of view, the authors of both works are simply engaged in greenwashing a toxic rainbow of capitalist dogma. Capitalism, at least in its current corporate form, works on laws that stand in stark contrast to those of sustainability, requiring infinite “growth” within the confines of a finite planet, requiring profitability no matter what the ecological cost, and concentrating wealth and power into tiny pockets, leaving a vacuum of the sort nature abhors everywhere else. Payne and Raiborn try to skirt this issue with a bit of semantics, using the word “business” when most often they mean “corporation”, the difference being that a business owned by a single individual, small cadre of partners, or cooperative members can legally take actions that are unprofitable if they feel the ethical need to do so, a corporation answers to its shareholders, who are legion, and is required by law to make decisions based not on the general good, but on how to maximize profits for their shareholders. If that can be achieved with sustainable practices, fine. However, if an ecologically unsound but more profitable option opens up, they are required by the rules of the market to take advantage of it.

Under capitalism “human welfare” is defined primarily in monetary values, and we humans are factored in as just another resource. True sustainability would (within the limits of human ability) strive to ensure that an empowered, prosperous humanity lives within its means as part of the nature world. Any system founded on the idea that some should gorge while others starve, that a distant elite should have the “right” to dictate local livelihoods based on their supposed ownership of local resources, and that “a rising tide lifts all boats” (which ignores the fact that it drowns all the boat less) cannot achieve the sort of sustainability that I feel is necessary for a just and fulfilling existence.

To be or not to be...

2009-09-20T06:58:00.000-07:00

...that is the question.

Whether it is nobler in Iceland to suffer the slings and arrows of second-class membership or apply for citizenship, and by so opposing, end it.

Ok, ok. Enough with the Bard.

Thing is, I want to be eligible for student loans, but as I am a non-E.U. permanent resident, I'm not.

Period.

End of story.

It doesn't matter that I'm a graduate of HÍ.
Doesn't matter if I've paid at least 10 years of taxes into the fund.
I'm a second class non-E.U. resident, so I can just fuck off.

Now, I'm eligible for Icelandic citizenship. This is no way means I'd get it if I applied. In all likelihood (judging from the tales other immigrants have told me) I'd have to apply several times, at 10,000ISK a pop, with all the bureaucratic BS it entails. Not to mention the possibility of the Office of Foreigner Surveillance (recently renamed Office of Foreigners, nor 'immigrants' mind you, 'foreigners) would suddenly discover some flaw in my residency and send me packing. After all, I'm stealing jobs from Icelanders.

If I was from an E.U. country, applying for student loans (not to mention housing assistance, disability insurance, unemployment payments, and a host of other services I help pay for but cannot apply for) would be no problem.

The hypocrisy of it really galls.

I mean, it effectively amounts to the State and all institutions thereof actively discriminating against me and others like me based on national origin, something they claim to be against. After all the 7 article of the Icelandic constitution bans discrimination based on national origin. (allir skulu vera jafnir fyrir lögum og njóta mannréttinda án tillits til kynferðis, trúarbragða, skoðana, þjóðernisuppruna, kynþáttar, litarháttar, efnahags, ætternis og stöðu að öðru leyti“).

Then there's the question of my U.S. citizenship. I may not be a big fan of the U.S. government but I do want to be able to go home at a moment's notice if my family needs my help, and while one is not required to give up their US citizenship if they gain citizenship in another country, they make it hard to keep, revoking one's citizenship if they can show "intent" on one's part to do so.

Meaning that if you've ever talked about it, written about it, or made less than "loyal" statements, poof, no more citizenship for you.

Add to this the fact that I am at heart against the very existence of the nation state, it bugs me to think of groveling for the supposed "right" to be essentially made the property of an institution that I have no real say in.

So its rock or hard place for me.

Damn

Jú sé jú vant e kónstitúsjón?

2009-09-20T04:17:00.000-07:00

During the pot-and-pans pandemonium this last winter I for one wasn't protesting for new elections.

I was protesting, at my most stupidly optimistic, for an honest-to-goodness-wipe-the-slate-clean-declare-year-zero revolfuckinglution.

However, I was willing to settle for constitutional reform.

Remember that?

Remember the idea that it had become high-time to rewrite the overly long, overly complex, and totally unworkable Icelandic constitution?

Somewhere along the line, the whole idea just disappeared.

Poof!

No more constitutional reform.

Looking back at it, I remember a plethora of articles pointing out just how expensive it would be.

After all, highly paid experts would have to be fed (on food worthy of such worthies) and housed (in houses worthy of such worthies) for months at a time in Reykjavík (you can't expect anything of this magnitude to happen anywhere else, það er bara svo lómó út í sveit...) each with a cadre of highly paid assistants...and after all, the country was broke and so of course we can't afford it and blah blah blah.

Now, thinking about it, this was a very slick bit of PR. By convincing people that a new constitution was too expensive, the powers that were and the powers that were to be managed to torpedo one of the most popular and radical demands that all us skríl were out pounding our pots for.

But the argument that we couldn't afford a new constitution because its too expensive is based on the same sort of 2007/old school political thinking that got us into this mess to begin with. I mean, come on! The delegates can't keep in touch via teleconference? It's not like it's a good thing that they should all be huddled together in Rvk, far away from the people they are supposed to be representing. And who the fuck says they should be paid??? If you pay the delegates a buttload of money to write a new constitution you'll wind up with the longest, most convoluted constitution of all time because the so-called experts will be sure to keep writing and debating for as long as they keep getting paid.

Why would we even want a constitution written by a bunch of tie-wearing stuffed shirts sitting around their tax-payer provided luxury homes debating issues of rights and justice over snifters of tax funded brandy and tables of tax funded catering?

I say we make good use of the internets, and call for a citizens constitution, a document that anyone residing in Iceland can have a say in one and one that must be ratified by the people by national vote.

It would take a long time, the debates would be many, the arguments heated, but it wouldn't cost a dime and in the end, when we work out a set of simple ground rules that we can all agree on, we implement them.

Regardless of what that bunch of self-serving incompetents and ideologues in Alþingi say.

Think of it as the political version of citizen arrest.

I mean, seriously, what have we got to loose?

Boring, busy, and long

2009-09-09T03:00:00.000-07:00

Seems to me that much economic thinking is buggered and blinded by prevailing myths about what life was like before the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. Which is why articles like this, drawing heavily from Sahlin's brilliant Stone Age Economics should be required reading.

An increasing consensus among anthropologists that hunter-gathers did not live lives that were "nasty, brutal, and short", in fact they tended to live lives of relative plenty, prosperity, and leisure.

We modern, industrialized consumer types, buried under a landslide of labor and stifled by a false sense of scarcity are in many ways far worse off, living lives that are busy, boring, and long.

One would think that with the increase in human knowledge over the course of history we could find a happy medium, but even amongst those that are working on major societal changes (sustainability, social justice, labor rights, etc) seem unable or unwilling to stare the truth in the face, namely that for nearly every wonder "progress" has wrought, said wonder has birthed a legion of evils.

This is not to say that I advocate the sort of return-to-Eden primitivism that certain lefty-greens seem enamored of (especially a lot of "deep" ecologists). What I advocate is the movement towards a society that enjoys the benefits of Sahlin's stone age economy along with the liberating (as opposed to enslaving, but that's another blog) technologies developed over the last few centuries.

Thinking that industrialized capitalism is going to solve the problems caused by industrialized capitalism is like thinking that tobacco cures cancer.

Sugar do do do do dudu ahhhh honey honey....

2009-09-08T05:40:00.000-07:00

So the government passes a "sugar tax". The idea is simple: Increase government revenue, decrease the over consumption of unhealthy and empty calories, and make healthy foods more competitive vis a vis the consumer's wallet.

The result is predictable: The tax winds up applying to only some sugar-filled products but not to others (super sugary yogurt and skyr drinks for instance) and somehow winds up applying to sugar-free products like chewing gum. The over all effect is to raise food prices and increase inflation to the point where the increase in state revenues equals out to nil.

Icelandic lawmakers remind me of a chef who never washes his pots and then wonders why his creme brulee tastes like steak...

Still alive, more so than usual in fact...

2009-06-23T12:14:00.001-07:00

I just haven't been bloggin cause I'm getting stuff done! YAY!

Posting term papers as blog entries is the height of laziness

2009-05-05T04:55:00.000-07:00

If Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman are wrong, and the path to hell really is paved with good intentions[1], its worth noting that on our drive to Damnation we have to take a stop in Limboville. Limbo is the waiting place, reserved for those stuck between salvation and damnation, and while not all good intentions lead us into the pit, some certainly lead us round in circles.

Animal liberation, and its most visibly public offshoot, veganism, are two examples. While both are based on admirable intent, all too often they serve to do little more than preserve our status quo, and sometimes provide us with an off-ramp to the abyss.

This may sound harsh, but good criticism usually is. While there are facets of the Liberationist movement that I can whole-heartedly support, there is as much, or more of the movement that I feel bound to condemn.

It is hard to argue against the “goodness” of Liberationist intentions. The movement to secure legal and ethical consideration for animal well-being, to prevent cruelty, suffering, and waste, to reduce environmental damage and increase ecological well-being are all noble aims. The problem lies in that great contradiction called life, wherein even the most carefully aimed bolt occasionally fires wide, wounding without intent. Whereas I agree with the anti-vivisectionist stance of the animal liberation movement, I find that veganism is a bolt fired wide, or, to continue the metaphor, a detour towards heck.

Pragmatism versus Dogmatism

My primary problem with the Liberationist stance is that far too many people have accepted it as a kind of dogma. I have no issue, and I think one would be hard pressed to find any thoughtful person that would have issue, with an individual making the decision to adjure the use of any and all animal products. Personally, I maintain that one of the most basic rights anyone has is the right to control what they put into their own bodies, and what they reject. As a personal choice, I see nothing wrong with veganism, but as I will point out later, as a blanket solution or dogmatic demand, it can become very objectionable, if not subtly dangerous.

By the same logic, a blanket condemnation of vegans or liberationists is equally objectionable, and it is not my intention to condemn individuals but rather to point out those flaws I see within the movement they belong to.

One of my first objections to veganism is simply that I find it terribly impractical. I do not find it impractical because it requires a great deal of time and thought to search through labels to determine what one is really eating, clothing oneself with, or applying to one’s skin. On the contrary, I find it admirable. Rather I find it impractical because veganism claims to be solving the faults of an impractical system from within the confines of said system.

Liberationists decry industrial factory farming of animals, and with good reason. Factory farming is wasteful, cruel, and as a rule very damaging to the environment. But then again, so is the industrial farming of vegetables and other crops. While the vegan decries the terrible quality of life that the factory pullet or veal calf suffers, they rarely spare much thought to the poor people who pick their fruit, raise their cotton, and harvest their vegetables for poverty wages, in harsh conditions, whilst being slowly poisoned by pesticides. Nor do they take into account the amount of pollution spewed into the atmosphere to ensure that fresh fruit and vegetables can be had year-round at the local market.

The problem is not factory farming of animals. The problem is factory farming period. Take away the industrialization, make farming small-scale, decentralized, less mechanized, and local and farming in general becomes less wasteful, cruel, and environmentally damaging.

Yet veganism or at least the “shallow veganism” addressed by Dr. Michael W. Fox in his essay “Deep and Shallow Vegetarianism and Animal Rights” does not differentiate between animal products from vastly different sources, say between free-range poultry and factory-farmed, but instead rejects all animal products. Add in the rejection of animal labor, and veganism begins to work against many of the movements stated aims in regard to the environment and the elimination of word hunger.[2]

Perhaps a hypothetical is in order. Let’s say we have a small family owned farm of perhaps 60 acres in a relatively fertile area with a temperate climate. Now, many a vegan will tell you that this farm could feed a great many more people if planted exclusively in vegetable crops.[3] If that were the case, then the farmer would likely need at least one tractor to till the land, which would cost him in repairs, fuel, and replacement. Even with multi-cropping and other organic methods of pest control, he would likely loose a sizable amount of each harvest to pests, primarily insects, but also deer, rabbits, feral pigs, and other creatures. Even if all the vegetable wastes were composted and returned to the soil, he would likely have to bring in artificial fertilizer after a decade or so, as the soil begins to loose nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphates. After each harvest, the farmer and his family would have a lot of vegetables for sale and for their own use, though they would have to sell most of them to be able to afford clothing, fuel, machinery, fertilizer, and pesticides.

Now take the same farm and introduce a few animals. Start with free-ranging chickens and ducks which help aerate the soil with their scratching, and eat up scraps as well as insects, fertilizing the soil as they go. The birds would also provide eggs, meat, and feathers which could be used to stuff pillows and quilts. Then add a small herd of cattle, perhaps only five head, one bull, two cows, and two oxen. The cows would provide milk, and their manure could greatly offset the farmer’s fertilizer bills. Also, rotating his crops to allow the cows grazing on the fallow fields would greatly increase soil fertility. The calves could provide meat, and one or two male calves could be castrated for oxen, which would replace the farmer’s need for a tractor and expensive polluting fuel. Slaughtering the cattle would also provide the farmer with leather for clothing.

Finally, the addition of a few pigs, fed on household scraps and the gleanings from harvested fields would provide even more food and fertilizer. What’s more, using animal waste produced on the farm to create methane for cooking and running machinery would further reduce the farmer’s costs both in energy bills and fertilizer.

This is not an exhaustive list of the animals a farmer might choose to raise on such a farm. He could have a few goats or sheep, and get milk, meat, wool, and leather in the process. If he grows rice, he can have fish and crustaceans in the paddies. He can also choose to use the meat of some of the pests (up to and including insects, as is the case in many non-western cultures) that are attracted to his crops, rather than poisoning them, or sterilizing them as suggested in Animal Liberation.[4]

Veganism and Cultural Imperialism

Now, there are many places in the world where farms like this exist, mainly in developing countries and isolated rural areas that fall off the map in our increasingly metropolitan world.

And therein lies the second problem with veganism. Despite all of its best intentions, veganism is very much a product of the industrialized urban world complete with meta-narratives of Progress and Consumerism. When Peter Singer discusses farming in Animal Liberation his discourse very nearly rejects the existence of farms like those discussed above. Singer focuses almost entirely on factory farms, both because they obviously provide a more visceral backdrop to his arguments, but also because as a product of an industrialized urban society, that is the kind of farming that he is familiar with and sees as normal. While he points out that that factory farming is a relatively recent invention, he conveniently glosses over that in many if not most parts of the world agriculture still resembles the example above. Singer portrays the idyllic family farm as a mythology, something lost to the past. This betrays a wealth of assumptions and prejudices about the world especially when paired with phrases like “simple country folk”[5] implying intellectual superiority on behalf of the enlighten vegan. Factory farming of animals is taken as a given, an unchangeable aspect of speciesism, just as mechanization is seen as standard. After all, why would a farmer use oxen, horses, or mules to till his land when there are perfectly good tractors to be had? The answer is that very many people could never afford a tractor, let alone the fuel to run it. Dr. Fox explains:

Even if, and hopefully when, we see the end of all factory farms and of an agricultural system in the US that uses some seventy percent of the good land to raise feed primarily for livestock, farm animals -- or some other wild herbivorous species, such as buffalo -- will be needed for the nutrient cycling of grasslands and of crop residues in many ecological farming systems. So-called ''green manure,' where certain plants are grown specifically to be mulched as fertilizer as an alternative to animal manure or chemical fertilizers, cannot be produced in sufficient quantity in arid farming and rangeland areas. Also chickens, ducks, geese, sheep and goats play an important role in insect and weed control in organic orchards, vineyards and other ecologically diverse and integrated farming systems.

Without the draught-power provided by oxen and other animals like water buffalo, third world people would have great difficulty cultivating the land. Peasant farmers cannot afford tractors, which are environmentally and ecologically less acceptable anyway. And without the dried manure from their animals, these peoples would have insufficient fuel to cook their food and boil drinking water, especially in arid and deforested areas. Livestock provide the main, if not the only, financial buffer against famine for the poor when their own crops fail, because they can trade their animals for basic staples such as cassava and grains, or they can kill and eat them.[6]

While Dr. Fox’s “deep veganism” can see the necessity and utility behind animals on farms, the shallow dogmatic vegan view does not take this into account.

The same could be said for food culture. As has oft-times been noted, the last vestige of an immigrant’s culture to fade is their food. They may lose their native language, religion, or clothing, but food culture stays. But food culture is not as important to the vegan movement as food politics. I have lost track of how often I’ve heard vegans say something along the lines of “people have to learn that a meal doesn’t have to include meat”. While that may be true to a person who is raised in a culture without strong food traditions, if one replaces “meat” in the previous statement with the word “rice” and then proclaims this to a gathering of South East Asians, you would be considered culpably culturally insensitive. Likewise, like many raised in a community of “simple country folk” I never had any questions as to where and from what the meat I ate came from, no matter the Anglophonic semantics that in Singer’s view serve to “conceal its origins”[7], and find it slightly insulting that he assumes this would cause me to abhor the food of my childhood. As Peter Gelderloos puts it in “Veganism is a Consumer Activity”:

For all these reasons, vegans can come off as particularly insulting and racially exclusive when they insist that a vegan diet is healthier for everyone (not true, some people are healthier when they eat some meat) or when they propagate the peculiar mathematical view of food that a vegan meal, as a lowest common denominator, is the only dietary option that is inclusive to everyone.

It is also worth noting that the emphasis placed on health by the vegan movement is itself a very western construct. In the affluent west, where starvation and malnutrition seem all but nonexistent, and where obesity and other dietary disorders are rampant, it makes sense that vegans try to sell their ethos on the grounds that it is healthier. But in many places around the globe, where the most pressing concern is simply getting enough to eat, this focus on healthy eating (more often than not defined as being thin) seems insensitive at best, and downright racist at worst.

But it is when shallow veganism is applied to cultures far removed from the industrial world, in places like the steppes of Mongolia, the taiga of northern Eurasia, the Artic, or any small island in the midst of vast oceans that its true potential for cultural imperialism, or what Paul Driessen has taken to calling eco-imperialism, the “forceful imposition of Western environmental values”[8] on indigenous peoples and developing nations, really comes to light.

For example, the vast Eurasian taiga provides little in the way of plant-based foods, and its poor soil and short growing season make agriculture immensely difficult. What’s more, for any large-scale agriculture to take place vast areas of forest would likely be cleared, which can hardly be good for the global environment.

The Sámi and related peoples, living a semi-nomadic lifestyle herding domesticated reindeer have managed to survive in this harsh landscape for centuries, inflicting little in the way of environmental damage in the process. Shallow veganism demands that in order for these people to live moral lives, they must give up this ecologically sound lifestyle, along with all the cultural knowledge and practice tied to reindeer, and instead feed themselves on soy, grains, vegetables, and fruit, not to mention cloth themselves in petroleum based artificial fabrics likely imported from hundreds or thousands of miles away. So in order to free the reindeer from the supposed Sámi cruelty it becomes necessary to disrupt, displace, and likely destroy a culture that has managed to do an admirable job avoiding the sort of environmental damage that the industrialized world is guilty of.

What then of the Sámi, the Inuit, Polynesians, Mongolians, etc? Most they rely on imported food stuffs and give up millennia of cultural traditions to live moral lives? What will they trade for these goods? Will they simply leave their homelands behind (perhaps as eco-resorts for wealthy vegans) and join the masses of humanity already punching the clock in the bulging megalopolises of the world?

Protecting Animals to Death

Speaking of environmental damage, another instance where the good intentions of the Liberationist movement run up against the complexity of the world has to do with invasive species. Very often when a non-native species is introduced to an existing ecosystem, the invasive species can do a great deal of lasting damage. One need only think of the plagues of rabbits and mice in Australia, or the damage done to New Zealand’s bird population after the introduction of the brown rat to realize the terrible damage exotic species can do. Yet, because Liberationists view each individual animal as having the right to live and not suffer (at least not at human hands), campaigns to eradicate feral and exotic animal populations are often met with howls of disapproval, if not sabotage. The only vegan-friendly options then become either the humane capture and separation of the invasive species (a highly expensive and inefficient option,), or the application of some form of sterilizing agent which would be slow, expensive, and likely unsuccessful, and would ironically require a great deal of animal testing to develop. What’s more the practice of liberating non-native species or even unnaturally large numbers of native species into an ecosystem can do immense harm. Such short-sighted actions can often lead the liberationist who just freed 400 mink from a fur farm to wonder where all the songbirds and trout have gone. This conflict between the health of entire ecosystems and the well-being of a particular population of animals, or even individual animals is one that the Liberationist movement must solve. As an article on The Wildlife Society Blog so succinctly put it:

One can perhaps understand concern for the fate of individual non-native animals expressed by animal rights advocates who oppose such control programs. However, such opposition further demonstrates the inherent differences between animal rights and conservation philosophy. Animal rights philosophy gives equal moral status to individuals of both common and rare species and native and non-native species, while the goal of conservation is to conserve populations of threatened or endangered native species, even if it means the lethal control of common or invasive species.

Focused solely on the “rights” of individual animals, animal rights philosophy does not take into account the intricate interdependencies between species in functioning ecological systems. This is a fundamental difference, which makes animal rights and conservation largely incompatible. Animal rights advocates also suggest that nature will take care of itself if we just simply “let it be”, when, in reality, humans have already altered the landscape so much that such laissez faire attitudes can only be described as “benign neglect.” In a world dominated by human influences, wildlife must be managed if it is to survive.

Capitalizing on Good Intentions

As Peter Gelderloos points out it is unlikely that simply boycotting meat will ever lead to the abolition of factory farming. As Gelderloos puts it “The crux of the matter is, veganism is a consumer activity. It is ultimately an attempt to change capitalism and human civilization through the exercise of one’s privileges as a consumer. This is an impossible approach.” Addressing the effectiveness of vegans boycotting meat to truly change the system of factory farming, Gelderloos states that:

I know of no general, unlimited boycott, in the long history of the boycott tactic, that has been able to eliminate an entire industry at the magnitude we’re talking about, nor do I know of any partial victories that suggest it may be possible with improved efforts. Targeted boycotts can be effective, especially when backed by sabotage actions, but when the boycott is not levied against a specific target—a product or company, but against an entire industry and huge class of goods, it simply cannot work. [9]

One could say that veganism, in boycotting the meat produced by industrialized capitalism, is much like the passenger in a car, boycotting the air conditioning because it is wasteful. While as a matter of personal conscience such a boycott is understandable, it fails to address the larger issues.

In Dogma We Trust

This brings me to my final criticism of veganism. While it may work as a personal belief system, in institutional settings it can become dogmatic and authoritarian, becoming in effect a religion as opposed to spirituality. Going back to Gelderloos :

Veganism dismisses personal and emotional considerations by declaring what is acceptable for everyone. This is a religious characteristic. Secondly, veganism takes moral prohibitions that are not logical within nature but only within a specific historical context and universalizes and mystifies them. Thirdly, veganism is missionary.

Or as Fox states:

The ethics of vegetarianism that some people embrace seem to go beyond biological and ecological reality, incorporating the mythic vision of the Peaceable Kingdom where the calf and the lion and the wolf and the lamb lie down together. In this vision, both lion and wolf are implicitly vegetarian. ... A 'deep' vegetarian would not impose his or her values or judgment on other species or cultures without first being biologically informed, and understanding the complex interdependencies in human-nonhuman animal relationships in other cultures and economies… From a deep bioethical perspective, a call for global vegetarianism may do more harm than good to people, animals, and Nature. It is not a panacea for all cultures and contexts.

My personal take on veganism in particular and much of the animal rights movement in general is that not only is it impractical, it is burdened with an internal logic that furthers many of the ills it seeks to cure. It all has to do with what William Cronon in the introduction to Uncommon Ground calls our “profoundly human construction” of nature. The vegan vision of “nature”, or at least of the animal portion of said nature, is an Edenic one, or as Fox puts it, a “Peaceable Kingdom”. It is a world where human interaction with the animal world is seen as detrimental not only to the lives of the animals, but to the moral standing of humans as well. It is part of what I call the hands-off ethos wherein humanity seeks to save the non-human world from ourselves by further separating ourselves from it. It’s the kind of thinking that leads people to protest berry-picking and mushroom hunting, fishing and game hunting in national parks on the grounds that such activities are “spoiling nature” because “we can get that stuff at a supermarket”.[10]

Yet there is a contradiction there as well, as the rights, a profoundly human concept, that vegans seek to grant (or simply recognize) in nonhuman animals in effect domesticates or at least humanizes them all. This from a movement that places the blame for animal cruelty on speciesism, on looking at animals solely in light of what use humans may take from them. It’s a bit like saying one is against racism or cultural imperialism, and then working to make sure minority groups conform to the standards of the ruling class. It seems to me that at the very least, the vegan view point still views animals in light of what is to be gained from them, but that gain is no longer material, but spiritual and political.

And because it is a spiritual and political activity, it can be taken to ridiculous extremes. As Fox points out, and I myself have witnessed, there are those who go so far as to force vegan diets on their carnivorous pets, despite the patent illogic of such a move. What’s more many self-described vegans keep pets, which according to the commandments of the movement is a form of animal servitude and ownership. Now, I have no qualms with pet ownership, after all the two most common companion animals (dogs and cats) have been in a symbiotic relationship with humanity since the late stone ages, but a biological omnivore that forces a carnivorous species to eat an herbivore’s diet should really take a moment to consider his or her actions.

Gelderloos points out another contraction in the vegan ethos when he brings up the “embarrassing heresy of freeganism[11]”. If the vegan ethos is truly concerned with the well-being of animals, then it must be concerned with the well-being of humans as well. We are after all nothing more than relatively hairless apes. But far from making an exception for the use of animal products that would otherwise be thrown away and left to rot, many vegans not only shun such products themselves, but attempt to keep others from them. I am reminded of a time back in 1998 when I helped gather dumpstered food for a chapter of Food Not Bombs (an organization that hands out free food, usually exclusively vegan) in the Olympia area in Washington State. On finding a dumpster full of still-chilled milk only a few hours past its sell-by date, I suggested we use it to make soup, or cheese. The flabbergasted response I received from a fellow dumpster-diver was to the effect that she would “rather see people hungry than drinking the puss-filled products of slavery”, at which point she began to punch holes in the milk jugs.

Finally, it worth noting the oddly self-defeating tendency of many vegans to also belong to organizations or espouse ideals whose stated aims would have the practical effect of making veganism a much more difficult proposition. Opposition to world-trade/globalism would be one such ideal. Without global trade in many food products, in particular soy, rice, and fruit, many areas of the world would not be able to support a healthy vegan diet. Likewise, the demands made by both the Deep Ecology movement and the Social Ecology Movement for “decentralization, small-scale economies, local autonomy, mutual aid, communalism, and tolerance”[12] run afoul of the vegan ethos, at least the shallow one.

Global trade in vegan-friendly products is only possible within a centralized and global trade network, one made up of large economies. Likewise, local autonomy demands that localities be able to meet their needs at the local level, and as discussed before, this often precludes veganism. Finally, the call for mutual aid and tolerance is tricky, given that the vegan ethos demands that one not support any use of non-vegan products, or those who use them.

Local Omnivorism versus Global Veganism

I am an unapologetic omnivore, but not an unethical one. I try to eat local, which currently means products produced in Iceland. I try not to eat factory-farmed meat or eggs, and instead choose to pay a bit extra for free-range eggs and poultry, when I can’t get eggs direct from friends in the countryside. I try to include wild foods in my diet, berries, mushrooms, self-caught fish, and what little in the way of wild greens are on offer.

I try to dress local too, as much as it is possible, making use of Icelandic wool and leather, which I see as a far more sustainable option than petroleum based fleece or imported cotton.

The Local Food movement is in many ways an answer to many of the problems facing the world today, including some of those central to the vegan argument. Small-scale local farming not only encourages free-range techniques, but has the added benefit of increasing diversity in crops and livestock, as instead of being raised on a massive scale whereby it behooves the farmer to alter the environment to suit his crop, the small-scale farmer has to tailor his crops, herds, and flocks to the environment. Likewise, local production for local use brings people in closer contact with the food they eat and the manner in which it is produced. Much of the cruelty that occurs in factory farms, or research labs for that matter, happens because it is out of public sight. With no one to hold the farmers/researchers accountable, they begin to loose sight of just how cruel their actions are. Likewise, to know where one’s food comes from is to reconnect on a very basic level with the land and environment where one lives, an important step in narrowing the man/nature divide.

Finally, the local movement, far from imposing one over-riding standard in diet, dress, and production, encourages not only a diversity of products, technologies, and lifestyles, but a diversity of cultures as well.

If the Liberationist movement and veganism in particular are paving the road to Limboville, then Localism (if I can be so bold to capitalize the term) presents us with another option: We stop paving roads and just stay home.

Sources:

1. Pratchet, Terry and Neil Gaiman. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes T. Nutter, Witch. New York: Workman Pub, 1990

2. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. London: PILMCO/Random House, 1995

3. Fox, Dr. Michael W. “Deep and Shallow Vegetarianism and Animal Rights” http://tedeboy.tripod.com/drmichaelwfox/id17.html 20.03.2009

4. Gelderloos, Peter. “Veganism is a Consumer Activity”. http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080604153638368 19.02.2009

5. Wikipedia. “Eco-Imperialism”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-imperialism 10.03.2009

6. Hutchins, Michael. “Removal of Invasive Species Results in Santa Cruz Island Restoration”. http://wildlifeprofessional.org/blog/?cat=19 04.01.2009

7. Cronon, William (ed). Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. 1996

8. Bootchin, Murray. “Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology”, Socialist Review 88 (1988):11-29. Reprinted in Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

[1] And not as they claim with frozen door-to-door salesmen.

[2] It bears pointing out that the cause of world hunger is debatable, with some placing the blame on scarcity, others on unequal distribution, and others on wastefulness, racism, capitalism, etc.

[3] Singer, pg 165

[4] Singer, pg. 223

[5] Singer, pg. 97

[6] Fox, Dr. Michael W. “Deep and Shallow Vegetarianism and Animal Rights”

[7] Singer, pg. 93: The fact that English often has separate words for an animal and for the flesh of that animal can be traced back to the Norman Invasion, when the ruling class (and hence the class that did most of the eating) spoke French while the ruled raised the animals. This is not the case in many, if not most languages, which says something about the cultural baggage Singer unwittingly carries. What’s more, Singer brushes over English’s single word scheme when it comes to the meat of birds, most game, and fish.

[8] Wikipedia: “Eco-Imperialism”

[10] I am paraphrasing an argument here that I had when a mentor of mine and I went mushroom hunting in Itsup National Park during my teens. The hiker who accosted us accused my mentor, a lifelong wilderness buff and environmentalist of “damaging priceless nature just to save a few bucks on mushrooms”.

[11] Defined as “only eating animal products if they are stolen or dumpstered”.

[12] Bootchin, Murray. “Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology”

Hey there black pot...

2009-04-29T04:22:00.000-07:00

So Saturday Icelanders went to the polls and elected themselves a couple a new people and a lot of the same old pack.

Whoopdeefuckindoo.

I spent the day cleaning up both "my" garden and the upstairs neighbor's garden, put a second coat of paint and some more plaster up in my kitchen, studied for my tests, did laundry, and cleaned the place up.

All this after putting up a sign about the futility of elections in the driveway right across from the polling station.

I spent the day with a slightly guilty feeling of moral superiority.

After all, I don't vote. I don't vote because I hate having to choose the lesser of multiple evils, and because taking part in such a system legitimizes said evils. Basically, I have to go with Ol' George Carlin on this one. Its not people who don't vote who "can't complain", its the people that do. After all, they took part in and helped legitimize this bullshit.

I had planned on the sign reading "The definition of irrationality is to do the same thing over and over but expect different results", 'cause really, in the long run, that's what politics is. It didn't quite fit.

Then later that night, Ragnar unexpectedly arrived from Caracas looking to hit the town. So I met him at Rosenberg, listened to a great concert, started blowing money on beer, went with him to friggin' B5 of all places (where my intense hatred of all things Yuppie nearly got me thrown out), then English pub (where I blew 3000+ krona on the magical beer spinny thingy) and finally wound up on my own at Dubliner, where I proceeded to get my Capt. Ahab on*.

It didn't work.

I wound up tired and cranky and broke at 7am in friggin Amsterdam of all places before finally deciding to haul my ass home.

Now, going out to see a friend I rarely get to see is one thing. Going out a concert, ditto. But I don't even like going out when I'm shizzle-faced anymore.

But I keep doing it.

Following exactly the same pattern.

Hoping beyond hope that this time the result will be different. Some heavenly creature will fall into my arms and all will be hearts and orgasims.

Just like the voters I quietly mocked earlier that day.

Hey, I'm black kettle...

* C'on! If you can't figure that one out, you're reading the wrong blog...

When in Rómaborg...

2009-04-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

I'm in a pissy mood.

Not angry, not enraged, not activated.

Just pissy.

Early Icelandic "spring" tends to bring this on. It teases you with a few fine days and then dumps more snow on your sunny dreams, while assignments and finals loom like storm clouds over the month of May.

It makes trivial trials harder to bear, like getting cussed out by my corpulent upstairs neighbor for keeping my recyclables, or in his words, trash, in "his" part of the heat-room. Never mind that I keep that place so much cleaner than before I moved in (what with removing the rank and rotting rubbish that my landlady tended to throw in there, being to lazy to take it out herself), sweeping regularly, and all that. Never mind that I cleaned up the building scrap he threw out of his second story window into the front lawn. Never mind that I keep the walkways and driveway snow free so his elderly mother doesn't break a hip getting to her taxi, or that he's left an old TV on my porch, keeps a rusty old car packed full of boxes in his driveway, and has never lifted a figure to help clean the place up.

I moved my recyclables out to the garage. I'd spent weeks getting it cleaned up and organized last summer, so I could use the covered space for remodeling work. Its now full of my landlady's daughter's stuff.

All this is annoying. But what has finally pushed me over the edge is, as usual, politics.

As usual.

The revolution is dead.

Actually, it was still-born.

As soon as the old government fell, everyone seemingly gave up. After all, we have the chance to elect the same old parties into power under the same old corrupt rules! Yay!

And while folks continue to struggle, while unemployment grows, banks continue to crash, businessmen award themselves bonuses while cutting employee pay, the "revolutionary" government of red/green beaurocrats passes laws to re-criminalise strip clubs, makes noise about re-criminalising boxing, and continues to "work" with the IMF.

The police, bless 'em, focus on expelling asylum seekers, hunting down marijuana farms, and confiscating poker tables, while the útrassavikingar continue to drain the country dry, siphoning cash off to tax-paradises while the powers that be argue about gender quotas.

Það er vont en það venst.

Oh sure, the peacenixs still got out to protest the 60th anniversary of NATO, and (here I'm not criticizing in the least) a series of protests has pointed out Iceland's self-serving and stealthily racist policy on asylum seekers, but is anyone planning anything in solidarity with the G20 protests?

Apparently just me.

So I sent out the call on the internets. And showed up to find the square empty. Walked around, listening for the rhythmic sound of pots pounded with spoons and the clang of house-ware revolution. I stood over the spots where you can still see the scorching from January's fires, now slowly filling in with half-frozen spring grass. I sat down with my pack full of improvised noise-makers and folded up signage, smoked my pipe, and fought the urge to just give up.

I don't blame anyone for not showing. Its not like I made a particularly coherent or moving call. Its not like I gave folks time. I sent the thing out last night around 9.

Hell, I showed up an hour late.

Because my corpulent neighbor needed me to shift my recycling so he could fit his fat ass into the boiler room and fiddle with the valves.

Apparently 45C wasn't hot enough for him.

I'm starting to see why Icelanders are so prone to self-serving stoicism. Its so much easier to roll with the punches than try to punch back...

I was gonna...

2009-03-26T03:36:00.000-07:00

write a fantastically insightful blog entitled "Everything I Ever Needed to Know About The Kreppa I Learned in Grunnskóli".

Then I discovered I somehow managed to erase the final group-work essay that I was supposed to proof read for Monday.

I suck.

What I did while I was lost in equation

2009-03-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Powered by Poop: Turning waste into wealth in a sustainable Iceland.

Introduction: Everyone poops.

Taro Gomi’s classic toilet-training book proudly proclaims that “everyone poops”. So we do. Every animal and we are animals, produces solid waste in the form of feces. Nothing earth-shattering or earth-changing there. However, when one starts to examine what we do with the poop everyone makes, things get a bit more interesting.

In the Western world, poop is a taboo. Up until the early 1980’s for instance, American TV shows where more or less banned from showing toilets in the homes of their fictional inhabitants, leading to the surreal home of the Brady family, with 8 people living in a home with no waste disposal. No toilet, no outhouse, nothing.

This wasn’t always the case of course. Poop, particularly livestock manure, has been a terribly useful substance in times past and in many places remains so. Aside from being the original organic fertilizer, it was dried and burnt as fuel, mixed with clay and straw to form wattle, still a common building material throughout Africa.

Today, with the world teetering on the brink of Peak Oil and in the midst of a major economic depression, another of those old uses for poop, namely converting said material to methane[1] a colorless, odorless (contrary to popular belief) lighter than air flammable gas, deserves a serious look.

Processing Poop.

The process of converting animal waste into methane is a relatively simple one, not much more complicated than brewing beer or distilling alcohol. There are two basic methods; batch digesting and continuous digesting, each of which is suited to certain situations.

Batch digesting works best on sheep, horse, dairy, and beef farms. To begin with a digester (usually more than one) is made by converting a liquid manure-spreader like the one pictured below.

The conversion consists of fitting the spreader with a vent and coupling to release the bio-gas (unfiltered methane along with some CO2 and other gases), a heat element attached to a thermostat (usually a radiator) inside the tank and a layer of insulation outside to maintain the necessary temperature (25-30˚C) and an agitator (think big blender) powered by the steam exiting the radiator to keep the slurry (mixed waste and water) from settling in the tank.

The farmer (let’s call him Bubba) then fills the tank with manure and water per standard procedure with liquid manure spreaders. Bubba then pulls the tank (now a “digester”) up to a storage tank (of which there are several designs, the cheapest being a gravity tank like that pictured below).

Biogas then feeds from the tank through a series of filters that help eliminate water vapor, CO2, and stinky sulfur dioxide, leaving purified (90%) methane. Once the slurry has been thoroughly digested, the digested slurry (now called sludge) is then spread on the fields as per usual. Meanwhile, a second tank is being filled, and ready to attach to the storage tank.

Continuous digestion works in a similar manner, but instead of filling one tank while emptying the other, several tanks are linked in series, so that by the time the slurry flows out as sludge, its been thoroughly digested. This design is more costly, but works very well for factory (chicken and pig) farms, as well as for converting human waste.

In both systems the slurry is broken down by anaerobic bacteria, leaving behind a nearly odorless enriched sludge suitable for use as fertilizer.

The Scoop on Poop.

While it may be true that “everyone poops”, not all poop is created equal. Some animals produce a lot of it, others considerably less. Likewise, when it comes to the methane that can be produced from poop, there are noticeable differences. As a general rule, ruminants (that is grass-eating animals) produce more poop, and the poop they produce is a better source of methane. Poultry produces very high methane returns, but less volume. Omnivores like pigs and humans produce considerably less methane, and humans produce less than pigs. Carnivores produce the lowest amounts of methane per kilo of poo, and for that reason (as well as the fact that fur farming has been decreasing year by year for the last few decades) it isn’t really worth including them.

The following chart based on numbers from Engines for biogas[2] shows the average daily output of several commonly raised domesticated animals in British Thermal Units (Btu) a measure of thermal energy roughly equivalent to burning one match:

Daily Btu output per animal

(Rounded to the nearest whole number):

1. Cattle (Dairy/Beef): 7148 Btu/day
2. Poultry: 36 Btu/day
3. Swine: 3597 Btu/day
4. Horses: 6949 Btu/day
5. Sheep/Goats: 1986 Btu/day
6. Humans: 596 Btu/day

According to the most recent census by Bændasamtök Íslands (The Icelandic Farmer’s Association)[3] the live stock population is as follows:

1. Dairy Cattle: 25,504
2. Beef Cattle: 41,466
3. Poultry: 181,857
4. Swine: 4,218
5. Horses: 75,644
6. Sheep/Goats: 455,656

The human population (according to most sources) is:

7. Humans: approx 320,000

So following the formula (number of animals) x [Btu/day x 365] we get the following results for Iceland in trillions of Btu.

1. Cattle (Dairy/Beef): 0.17 trillion Btu/year
2. Poultry: 0.02 trillion Btu/year
3. Swine: 0.05 trillion Btu/year
4. Horses: 0.19 trillion Btu/year
5. Sheep/Goats: 0.33 trillion Btu/year
6. Humans: 0.69 trillion Btu/year

This gives us a total of 1.45 trillion Btu/year produced from animal waste. However, this number is only a rough estimate, as average methane production reports vary (I went with some extremely conservative numbers). Also while most of the cattle (sheep, goats, horses, beef cattle, and dairy cows) spend a great deal of their time out of doors, and hence leave poo littered all about the fields as opposed to on the barn floor, the Icelandic populations could spend more time indoors due to inclement weather than their Southerly cousins, leading to increased returns.

To put this in perspective, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that Iceland consumed 20,080 barrels of petroleum fuels per day. So to crunch the numbers that’s 7,329,200 barrels of primarily petrol and diesel a year at an average of 5,523,000 Btu per barrel meaning that Iceland consumes about 40.5 trillion Btu a year[4]. Hence Iceland could replace 3.5% of its current petroleum use with renewable methane from animal waste alone. This is not, as it might first seem, chump change. The total livestock methane output for the U.S. if converted would be no more than perhaps 1%.

It’s worth keeping in mind that municipal organic waste (otherwise known as garbage) can also be processed into methane. Currently Metan hf. is the only company in Iceland exploring this option According to CEO Björn H. Halldórsson Metan’s yearly out put is between 0.076 and 0.1 trillion Btu per year.[5] Splitting the difference and adding those 0.88 trillion gives us approximately 2.33 trillion Btu or 5.7% of Iceland’s current consumption. It’s also worth keeping in mind that Metan is only one operation, operating only in the capital area. If every municipal landfill in Iceland was tapped for methane, we could very well see the total number go up to 7-8%. Finally, I did not include the conversion of “green matter” (old straw, vegetable scraps, plant trimmings etc.) and organic waste from ethanol production, but such wastes could provide another substantial addition to methane production.

One man’s shit is another man’s gold

So getting down to brass tacks, what would this mean to Bubba the farmer? Well, assuming he lives on a farm with his wife and two children, 300 sheep, 10 cows, and perhaps 3 horses, and he puts all the poop into a digester, he would get approximately .00021 trillion Btu. In practical terms, this is equivalent to 5753 liters of diesel fuel. Now assuming that Bubba has an older tractor, eating up fuel at a rate of 30 liters per hour of operation, this means that he can run his tractor for 191 hours or roughly 8 days, or drive his car (assuming it consumes something like the average of roughly 10 liters per 100 kilometers) 57,530 km. All on fuel produced at home. Assuming that 5753 liters of diesel costs roughly 863,000 ISK at retail prices, the benefits for Bubba are clear.

Producing the fuel at home has another hidden benefit, namely that no fuel is expended shipping said fuel out to Bubba’s farm. If every farmer in Iceland converted their poo to power, the net savings in petroleum used in shipping petroleum would be impressive, as would the reduction of greenhouse gasses. This is due not only to less petroleum being burned to ship other petroleum out to Bubba’s farm, but also due to the fact that much of the methane captured in Bubba’s digesters would have leaked into the atmosphere anyway, and methane is 20 times the greenhouse gas that CO2 is.

As for factory farms and municipalities, the picture is a tad murkier. After all, a small city with a population of 4,000 (Ísafjörður for instance) would only produce about .0009 trillion Btu. However, the fuel produced would likely be enough to power a few buses, fire-engines, and ambulances. As an added benefit, just digesting the municpal slurry would be an improvement on the generally woeful state of Icelandic sewage treatment. In many municipalities around Iceland, sewage is pumped out to sea with little or no treatment at all. Digesting it for methane would improve, however slightly, the situation.

But wait, there’s more.

If Iceland really wanted to clean its municipal sewage, and reap a major energy reward in the process, they should look no further than the broadleaf cattail (Typha latifolia) a hardy perennial plant common throughout the Northern Hemisphere. While this incredibly undervalued plant has a myriad of uses, only two (or maybe three) concern us here, namely its ability to thrive on waste water while cleaning it, and the fact that when ripe it can be as much as 60% starch. Allowing digested sludge to flow through an artificial wetland planted in cattails would not only lead to much cleaner emissions entering coastal waters, but could yield as much as 3,784 liters of ethanol fuel per acre or 117,304,000 Btu.[6]

Cattails spread via a long underground root called a rhizome, which along with the lower stalk of the plant contain most of the starch. Because they spread via rhizomes, they can be contained in concrete lined troughs, with no danger of going feral via seeds. Once harvested, these plants could then be fed through a shredder, and immersed in a tank of warm water. An enzyme that breaks down the fibrous cellulose is then added, along with malt enzyme (the same substance used to break down cereals for brewing beer and whiskey) and placed into a fermentation vat where yeast break down the sugars, producing ethanol, which is then distilled (using the same heat source that heats the slurry) filtered, and put into a car. If the cellulose is simply skimmed off, it can be put to productive use closing the poop loop, namely producing that necessity of necessities shown below.

The organic matter left over from the fermentation process can then be cycled through the biogas digester. In other words, the poop loop gets closed.

From “prump” to pump.

Because of the Western taboo when it comes to crap, “poop power” is going to be a hard sell. After all, people are loath to think that the waste from fuel exiting their car’s tailpipe was once the waste from fuel that exited their own. But when viewed in a rational light, the benefits are so enormous as to outweigh bourgeois squeamishness once and for all.

What benefits? Aside from the marked increase in water quality that would result from treating municipal waste in the manner mentioned above, and the decrease in greenhouse gases concurrent with methane production, every non-electric car, truck, boat, and motorcycle on the road or on the sea in Iceland today can be converted to run on either ethanol (which was Henry Ford’s fuel of choice for the Model T[7]) and/or methane by installing a conversion kit. Essentially this means altering the carburetor (which blends fuel and air to the correct proportions) and installing a compression tank for the methane. Diesel engines require replacing the glow-plugs (which provide heat to help ignite the fuel) with spark plugs if converted to run on methane. This not only saves the consumer the price of buying an entirely new vehicle, but also cuts drastically down on the energy and materials consumed to manufacture a new fleet of vehicles.

This being said, powering Iceland with poop is only part of the solution, especially when you consider the woeful state of my math skills. Methane could only account for 5% of Iceland’s current consumption. Also methane doesn’t compress well making it hard to transport. This means that long-distance vehicles wouldn’t work very well on methane unless they were able to re-fuel on a regular basis. But with methane being produced on most farms and in most small towns around the country, this wouldn’t be a problem. If the methane is used to power farm equipment the point becomes moot, as any equipment would be operating very close to its source of fuel. Ethanol doesn’t have the same draw backs, but it’s unlikely that Iceland would ever be able to produce the equivalent of 40.5 trillion Btu that it currently consumes. So we are left with reducing that number.

Electric vehicles, in particular rail could help bring that number down considerably although they will still have very high embedded energy costs. Another method would be to work at increasing the efficiency of internal combustion engines by pairing them with good old fashioned steam power to produce mechanical hybrid engines. Internal combustion uses the explosive force of burning fuel; the heat is mainly a waste product. Meanwhile steam engines use the heat, but fail to capture the force of expanding gases. Considering that both types of engines have similar mechanics (pistons or turbines) the solution is out there. We just need a few enthusiastic engineers to figure it out.

An Iceland free from dependence of fuel imports would be more prosperous, as the drain on the national coffers would melt away. It would also be more secure, as short or long term trade disruptions would not have as much impact. Likewise, the decentralized nature of the production and decrease in transport of these fuels would lower the over all severity of accidents. One storage facility wouldn’t be able to blow up an entire neighborhood, and the loss of two production sites wouldn’t leave the nation with naught but shoes and bikes to travel by. Finally the “waste” from methane digestion is enriched fertilizer, allowing for increased domestic food production, which is an important goal to strive towards for a small and geographically isolated island nation like Iceland. Additionally the monetary savings resulting from domestic fuel and fertilizer production would go a long way towards balancing Iceland’s trade deficit.

All in all, poop power is an idea whose time has come. In the American vernacular, it’s high time we shit or get of the pot.

Math is hard

2009-03-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

So I'm working on this paper of doom.

It involves math. I haven't done math for a really really long time.

And I am not good at it.

This same paper caused the ugh spiral the other day.

Its about the total amount of methane that could be produced from animal waste in Iceland.

My first math mistake was a complete fuck-up of decimal points. I turned .071 into 71%.

My next series of mistakes made the percentage into 18%.

After correcting that, I got what I thought was a more realistic number of roughly 8%.

But that was based on the average methane production of sheep versus dairy cattle.

See, sheep poo produces about 10% more methane than cow poo. Simple really. Just up the cow poo figures by 10%.

Which is what I did. But noooooooooo.

See, I forgot that the total amount of poo produced per sheep is a hell of a lot less than that shat forth by the average 1000 pound plus dairy cow.

So now I have to do the math over.

For like the 5th time.

Shit.

Crisis of confidence...

2009-03-10T04:38:00.000-07:00

So I spent the weekend in class, learning about a lot of things I either already knew or could have happily survived without knowing.

Not that it was bad. I mean, it was fun talking with my fellow students, bitching about the instructors and talking shop.

And I did get to see Watchmen, which was fucking brilliant.

I also nearly finished an interesting report, late of course, for the same class. Admittedly I let my enthusiasm get the better of me in the rough draft, moving a decimal point a tad too far, which required a complete rethink once corrected. But I was practically done.

Until I accidentally erased the whole fucking thing this morning.

Which kicked off a spiral of ugh.

I start thinking of how far behind I am in my other classes (two big projects breathing down my neck and a pile of reading I;ve managed not to do). I start thinking of how easy this University thing used to be. I start wondering if I actually have half the potential I've let myself believe I have.

The worst bit is how little I seem to be able to do. I can barely keep up with the three classes I'm in, so how can I keep up with the 4-5 I should be in? I can barely make time to work out, I haven't worked on the apartment since January, I've had to drop one Social Services client, and I don't seem to have time for any sort of social life.

Meanwhile, people I know are having endless adventures, making babies, running for office, organizing volunteer projects, etc.

I want to be better. At everything. But the thwarted desire sends me into a spiral of ugh.

I hate the ugh spiral.

Riding along in the car...

2009-03-04T02:45:00.000-08:00

Throughout the recent spate of political and economic upheaval here on the LavaLump, there's been an unending series of analogies likening Iceland to a ship.

Which to me doesn't make sense anymore.

I mean, sure, Icelanders pride themselves on being sailors and fisherfolk but come on? A better analogy would be to a car, as gas-guzzling luxury SUVs first managed to surpass fishing boats and factory trawlers as symbols of Icelandic success, and then managed to be an embarrassing reminder of past excess.

So imagine the Icelandic government as a car.

Now, the old, Independence Party government would be a luxury SUV. Its bigger than strictly necessary, expensive to fuel, and full of pricey extras that while serving no real purpose make it look really cool.

Of course, there isn't enough room for everyone in it. Men sit up front, women in the back, and foreigners have to hang on to the roof-rack or cling to the bumper, even if they've paid for their fare share of the gas. The thing's covered with corporate logos.

At some point, it runs out of gas, breaks down, crashes into a wall, or some combination thereof.

And we all get out on the streets.

We light fires. We pound on pots and pans, blow horns, throw eggs and skýr and whatnot. The old car is broken, we want a new one.

Now, out there in the seething surging crowd of egg-chucking pot-banging fire-lighting folk, there are a lot of different and conflicting ideas about what kind of car we should get.

Some want to scrap the car idea and invest in a train, big enough for everyone to ride in.

Some want a police car, a big ol' paddywagon so they can feel safe and secure.

Some want a limo.

Some want a tractor.

Some want a tank.

Some want a smart new hybrid.

Some of us just think 'Fuck it, I'll ride a bike'.

What we get is the exact same car.

Sure, they let the women move up front, even put one in the driver´s seat. And sure, they let a few foreigners in, but oddly enough not the ones who´d already paid for the gas.

Mostly though, they just scrap the plan to armor-plate the thing and slap a new coat of paint on it.

Red and green of course.

If the Revolution ain't dead yet, its on life-support.

Tootin' me own horn.

2009-02-24T02:17:00.000-08:00

Maybe it was my upbringing, maybe I have self-image issues, whatever. As a rule I'm more prone to make fun of myself than to brag, more likely to doubt myself than believe I can accomplish anything.

'Cept when I'm drunk of course.

Which kinda proves my point.

But despite the general malaise on the Lava Lump at the mo', I'm feeling surprisingly vindicated. I'm a trend-setter, practically a prophet.

For years now, I've been talking about the possibility of farmers converting their manure into a second cash crop, mainly methane.

For years now, I've been talking about major constitutional change being necessary, short of a complete revolution.

For years now, I've been one of the voices crying out in the new-liberal wilderness for the re-nationalization of fisheries.

Ditto crying out for the elimination of the parasitic state-sponsored middlemen in the food trade, instead advocating direct farm-to-customer sales.

I've told anyone who will listen how much more sensible employee-owned co-opts are.

I've pointed out time and again that nothing was going to change until people made their voices heard.

A few weeks after the Economic Collapse of DOOOMMMMM!!!!! my friend Jimmy and I founded La Brigada Negra Cacophonica, reasoning that if the powers that be won't listen, we need to pump up the volume. Admittedly, we were told to hush up at first, but people finally got the point after the ridiculous and downright embarrassing silent protests during the Xmas season, they finally pulled out the pots and pans and had themselves a revolution.

All these things have either come to be, or at least are on their way.

Now, unlike some, I stake no claim on having caused any of this. Hell, I doubt I even inspired or informed that much.

But its nice to know that I'm right almost as often as I'm wrong.

They can put out the fires in the streets, but not the fires in our hearts.

2009-01-22T02:41:00.000-08:00

Enough blogging. You won´t be hearing from me for awhile.

They've gassed people.

Beaten them.
Sprayed them.

Arrested children.

Beaten old folks.

All so they can keep their stranglehold on power. All so the rich stay richer while the poor get poorer, paying off the debts of the very people who sank a nation into bankruptcy. The PM complains of "violence" when his (publicly funded) car is hit with eggs and surrounded by protesters, and yet he lauds the police for doing a good job when they beat and gas people to "protect" a building. A building, no matter how historical, how symbolically important IS NEVER WORTH INFLICTING INJURY ON YOUR FELLOW MAN. I don't care if windows are broken, but broken bones are a different story. Know this: All of this could have been prevented. If those in power would taken the responsiblity they have been so generous compensated for and STEPPED DOWN, none of this would have happened, and what's coming, the darkness ahead, could have been avoided. In any other nation, stones and bottles would have been flying weeks ago. We've tried to be reasonable. But one can only kneel for so long before one has to rise up.

To the police of Iceland: BACK OFF! You are out numbered, unsupported, and fighting a loosing fight. The very institutions you work to protect are working to sell you, your children, and your children's children into debt slavery in order to line their own pockets. Don't pour more petrol on this fire. You can't put it out.

Totally TMI

2009-01-15T03:42:00.000-08:00

Weird fact.

9 times out of 10, whenever I get online for anything more than five minutes, I wind up needing to take a dump.

I don't know why.

My current theories include colon-specific radiation from internet sites, the usually rather hunched position I type in, or, most likely, my body having to make room for all the bullshit coming off the web.

Garbage in, garbage out, non?

Brave New Year

2009-01-13T02:07:00.000-08:00

Hello dearest darling blogodytes.

Miss me?

So I'm sitting in what should be the first class I can attend of my shiny new career as a grad student, but oddly enough, no one is here.

This is in keeping with the trend so far, whereby the few courses I can attend have either been canceled at the last minute or conflict with each other's schedules.

Oh well.

Try not to freak.

That's kinda my mantra for this brave new year.

Try no to freak.

Thing is, it dawned on me during the dark days of December that the one overriding theme of my 2008 was fear.

I was afraid of getting hurt, so I cocooned myself in with those friends I knew I could trust, and locked everyone else out.

I was afraid of getting my heart broken, so I dallied in meaningless flings and avoided anything that might have become real.

I was so afraid of screwing something up, that I didn't get anything done. Not at school, not at work, not fixing the apartment, not nothing.

And the fear grew. It got big and got teeth and started to insinuate itself into my dreams, into my consciousness, so that suddenly I was avoiding protests for fear of being thrown out on the country and barely making it to work on time because I had to go back and check that everything was locked up. The fear tried to spoil my one brave act of the year (going to Spain) by filling my head with all the things that could go wrong. On the way there I worried about getting lost or getting in trouble with customs, on the way back I freaked out about the Icelandic authorities trying to deport me.

A whole year went by and I let fear define it, and let that fear render me nearly useless.

Which stops now.

I'm not going to let my fears hold me back any more.

So I'm back at school.

So I'm working on the apartment.

So I'm going out and meeting new people.

Fuck fear, fuck it right up its furry little bottom.

Look out 2009, Da Sma is back!

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing Crying "Wolf!"...

2008-12-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

So it finally happened.

Yesterday, during a new session of Parliament, 30 some odd protesters attempted to get into the balcony reserved for members of the public in Alþingi. The guards barred access, but two pushed through and shouted at the Parliamentarians to get out.

At which point seemingly every police officer in Reykjavik spend to the scene to remove the protesters from the stairway where they had been stopped by the guards.

And a scuffle broke out.

State television as well as the newspapers report that two policemen were injured (bites and bruises) and one guard (bumped into a radiator). There are no reports, except from the protesters themselves, of injuries to protesters.

The cops didn’t gas anyone.

Of course they didn’t. The reek of corruption in that place makes pepper-spray a deodorant.

Now we’ll have to listen to the ruling class bitching and moaning about “violence”.

Why the quotes you ask?

Well, let’s just say that the Icelandic ruling class has a very peculiar definition of “violence”.

Like when a police car was driven through a crowd of environmental protesters, and one of said protesters was charged with ‘attacking police property” after slamming his hands on the hood of the vehicle. Never mind that the car posed a threat to life and limb, we can’t have “violent” protesters “hurting” police cars.

Or during the trucker’s protests last year. When several large trucks boxed in the Prime Minister’s (gas-guzzling luxury) car (illegally parked in a handicapped spot) while Geir attended a meeting about Iceland’s image. He got all high and mighty about it, telling the press in his best George Bush that the Icelandic State would not negotiate with people who use such “violent” tactics. This was pre Gas! Gas! BTW.

Then there were the Falun Gong protests of yesteryear, when the Icelandic police rounded up hundreds of dangerous protesters (apparently doing Tai Chi is “violence”) and either forcibly deported them or denied them entry to the country so as to ensure that a visit by a genocidal foreign president would not embarrass the country.

Back in 2001, there was the case of the admittedly rather wacky head of a rather wacky far-left party who was threatened with life imprisonment for making “terrorist threats” when he pointed out that thanks to a tiny cabal of Icelandic plutocrats signing the entire nation onto the Coalition of the Willing in direct opposition to the will of 80%-90% of the population, Iceland could expect to be a target for terrorist groups.

During the early stages of Rvk’s game of musical chairs with the mayoral seat, a large group of legitimately angry people filled the viewing platform at city hall and angrily and loudly denounced the markedly undemocratic events taking place. The papers immediately filled with politicos denouncing this “violent” attempt at overthrowing democracy.

Not to mention the environmental activists who slopped green skýr on some aluminum execs being charged with assault and terrorism or some such nonsense.

In the recent round of protests, the throwing of eggs and skýr and rotten fruit at the Parliament house have been called “violence” by members of the ruling class and their deluded supporters.

The only “violence” that might justify removing the quotes involved smashing in the doors to the police station.

But as far as I’m concerned, that’s not violence either. Property damage is sabotage at best, vandalism at worst, but as inanimate objects feel no pain and have no rights, one cannot inflict violence on them. Moreover, the property is question was public property, which was being used against a member of the public for political purposes, and therefore, to my mind, fare game.

On the other hand, apparently spraying a crowd with a chemical weapon designed and formulated to cause intense pain is not violence. It’s “keeping the peace”.

This is sadly true of any government anywhere, and one of the reasons I’m an Anarchist. All governments claim a monopoly on the use of force, thereby justifying violence against “their” citizens by claiming that they are “preserving public order” or “keeping the peace” or “weeding out undesirables” or “solving the Jewish problem”.

Meanwhile any civilian who defends themselves against the state, even if said defense poses no threat to the State (like when simply owning a gasmask during the ’98 Seattle WTO protests was criminalized to prevent people from preventing the police from gassing them) will be persecuted and prosecuted.

So when a group of protesters walk through an open door and attempt to enter an area reserved for the public, that’s “violence”, but when a group of armed men with dogs kick in doors (to which they could have got keys if they wished) handcuff people in a state of undress, ransack dwellings, confiscate money and ID, regardless of probable cause, that’s “keeping the peace”.

When a police officer gets bitten, or a guard shoved while preventing members of the public from accessing a publicly owned building, that’s violence. When people are thrown to the ground, pinned down, trussed up like Christmas turkeys and manhandled out of the building for standing up for their rights, that’s not “violence”. That’s “keeping the peace”.

Just like they did in Tiananmen Square.

The problem is that many of the very people protesting have been deluded into thinking that the very government they’re protesting really does have a monopoly on force, and so to prevent them from using it, hold ultra-peaceful protests the likes of which astound people from other lands, where the public is less fully domesticated than here. Protests that involve a lot of talking and sign-waving, but nothing much that will actually force a group of people who have stated flat out that they will not listen to the protesters to resign.

After all, its just skrilæti.

Icelanders tend to be very proud of being “peaceful”, after all, the only people here who want an army are a deluded fascist bootlicker with a uniform fetish and his supporters, who magically get re-elected year after year. But this love of “peace” is in fact a fear of confrontation, one that shows itself throughout Icelandic society. Icelanders, for example, tend to be very passive aggressive, preferring to voice their frustrations to a third party rather than taking it up with the party frustrating them.

Unless their drunk.

This leads to a very handy dynamic for those in power. All they have to do is wait until things get “a little out of hand”, and the public, afraid of “violence”, will stop supporting protesters and try to distance themselves from them. This happened after the Gas! Gas! incident, when a bunch of drunken teens and some legitimately angry truckers clashed with riot cops. Now, the cops got a black eye, coming across as a bunch of trigger happy incompetents, but the public, fearful of “violence” quickly went from supporting the truckers to whingeing about them.

The same could happen now.

And the hypocrisy of it galls. If I call for a hundred people to show up with shields and armor, no clubs, no sprays, no stones, guns, Molotov cocktails, or any other offensive weapon, just shields and armor to protect us against clubs and sprays and rubber bullets, I’d in all likelihood be accused of inciting people to violence. Meanwhile the cops petition for Tazer torture guns, attack dogs, bigger paddy-wagons and probably (very quietly) for water cannons for their neither confirmed nor denied “defense force” in order to “ensure the peace”.

Who the fuck is kidding who here?

I’m not afraid of violent protesters. The protesters I’ve met and talked to, marched with and chanted with, even the most radical among them are not violent people. They have no plans to burn down buildings or assassinate anyone. No one is bringing Molotovs. I feel considerably safer in the presence of my fellow protesters than I do walking down Laugarvegur on a rowdy night.

I do fear violent policemen. I fear men who are convinced that they not only have the right, but the duty to inflict violence on others, imprison them, and harass them. I fear that those who hold a hammer long enough will begin to see nails all around them. I fear the “superiors” such men answer too, and their willing help in the media, who could convince this nation that those fighting for political, economic, and social justice are somehow public enemy number one.

I don’t fear “violence”. I fear “keeping the peace”.

Europris Bastards

2008-12-07T12:41:00.000-08:00

So I have to amend my previous post.

Thanks to my idiotic decision to shop at the Walmart of Northern Europe, Europris, I find that my wish list requires the following additions.

Not that anyone has to buy this shit for me, just that if they want to, they can.

I won't complain.

I want a bike. More to the point, I want a bike that isn't held together by cheap plastic painted to look like metal. Like my Europris bike, Sid the Vicious Cycle. I've replaced one set of brakes (cheap plastic shattered), a seat (metal cracked) and recently had a petal break off (due to a "metal" rod snapping off to reveal its plastic interior). Add all that to the number of times the brakes have needed adjusting and the fenders fallen off and yeah, I need a new bike.

I also need some snow boots, preferable quite high above the ankle, black, and with a zipper. Unlike my Europris snow boots, which have laces, the hooks for which started to snap after two days wear. I'd like my Xmas boots to have a nice warm insulating interior, unlike my Europris boots that wore away after a week, forcing me to buy insoles so I wasn't walking on rubber ridges.

Thirdly, I'd like a snow suit, or kuldagalli, which is the single most proletarian piece of attire one can sport in Iceland now that krúttkynslóð appropriated the lópapeysur. Unlike the red and black one I bought from Europris, I'd like a snow suit equipped with a zipper that doesn't shred itself into uselessness after a month's use.

Finally, I'd like Europris to shove its collective head up its collective ass and burn in the fiery pits of Hades. With holly crammed up their nostrils and Xmas lights wired around their collective genitals.

Merry friggin Xmas.

And now for something completely different...

2008-11-29T02:45:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting at the Embles, stealing the internets out of her computers. I'll be going to the protest later, and probably post another rabble-rousing rant afterwards.

But for now, a word or two about Yule, or Xmas, or the Great and Terrible Yearly Tree Sacrifice.

Having recently come to the conclusion that what little money I currently have needs to be used up ASAP on durables (aka flooring and a fridge and a stove) and ever-more expensive food and drink, I'm a bit loathe to indulge in the yearly consumer feeding frenzy of gift buying and receiving. For starters, I just plain don't got no room at my place. So a pile of prezzies presents a problem.

I've also decided that I'm gonna try to give time this year, when possible, as opposed to goods.

So that said, here is the Great and Powerful Wish List '08 Style Yo.

1. DVDs- I want (but do not need) classics this year, namely movies I watch with my pa like "Paint Your Wagon" and "The Quiet Man". "Stardust" would be appreciated as well, as would "Frida" (rawrrrrr), "Accepted", "100 Girls" (not a porno!), and "Pump Up the Volume" (nostalgia much?).

2. Albums- Namely the first Hjalmar album, anything by Eivor, and anything new by Great Big Sea, Flogging Molly, and Against All Authority.

3. Time- by which I mean help with the apartment remodel. It doesn't have to be long, or ever arduous, I just want someone to lend me a hand or two. I'll provide beer.

4. Home brewing equipment- Pretty freaking self explanatory.

5. Whiskey- ditto.

6. Thermal underwear- ditto on the ditto

7. Electric hair trimmer- so I don't have to keep bugging the Embles for haircuts.

8. World Peace/World Wide Anti-Capitalist Uprising

9. Salmaesque punk-rock hotty that falls madly in love with me.

10. None of the above. Except #3. Take care of yourselves. Use your dwindling assets to shore up you and yours against the coming dark. Call me if you need a hand.

When in the course of human events…

2008-11-26T05:13:00.000-08:00

It’s been a strange couple of months over here on the Lava Lump. Exhilarating, infuriating, frightening, inspiring, but most of all, tantalizing.

I’ve long complained about the tendency of my adopted countrymen to bend over and take blatant injustices without comment or public complaint. Oh sure, they’d complain in private, or in longwinded obtuse articles to the newspapers, but the rarely if ever simply took to the streets in force to demand justice.

Now they have.

Sadly, as proud as it makes me, as much as it fills me with a sense of solidarity and wild, apocalyptic joy, it all-to-often seems too little too late.

Judging by the reactions of the various ministers (including the ruling duo, the Prime Minister and Minister of State) at Monday’s open meeting, the ruling elite of Iceland not only don’t much care what we think of them, they don’t give a flying fuck what we think.

Sitting on their massive pension funds (that they half-jokingly “reformed” last week”), secure in their sense of superiority, they have the unmitigated gall to claim that they and they alone can solve this mess they are largely responsible for causing. They claim that the newly activated public that flooded Haskolibio and fills the square in front of Parliament every Saturday “doesn’t represent the will of the people”. What’s worse, they claim that they “cannot” step down as they and they alone are capable of carrying out the financial aid package from the IMF.

Hiding behind the skirts of a corrupt capitalist vulture is not fucking leadership people.

Hell, if the IMF is going to pull out if the current government steps down, that makes it all the more desirable.

Meanwhile, its becoming increasingly clear that the banks, and by “the banks” I mean the clique of bankers and financiers that control them, were doing some incredibly shady deals, deals that in just about any other country would have them up on charges facing serious jail time. They loaned themselves and their cronies money to buy shares in their own banks, with no collateral save the shares purchased in order to artificially inflate the worth of said banks.

And the government helped them out, by neither investigating, nor, as far as I can tell, even bothering to pass any regulations against such dubious dealings.

The end result is that the capitalist class and the ruling class joined hands to sell the Icelandic public in to debt slavery at the hands of a non-representational, undemocratic cabal of banking and corporate interests called the IMF.

Enough already!

People are loosing their homes and livelihoods while the government scrambles to shore up the crumbling corrupt banks. While the general public is stuck with price insured loans that continue to grow no matter how much you try to pay off,* the banks get bailed out, even though they themselves are in massive debt.

Does this seem just to you? The banks borrowed in excess of their means, and then, under the cover of secrecy and fraud, loaned that money out to the public at loan-shark interest.

This cannot stand.

The simple fact is that until the banks themselves are solvent, until they’ve paid off their debts, including those debts incurred in artificially inflating their stock prices, they have no fucking right to expect us to pay. They took the risk in borrowing from Peter to loan to Paul, and those who took out a loan in good faith, thinking that they were borrowing against real assets instead of fictional finances, are under no ethical obligation to pay anything back, let alone price-fixed high interest loans that lead to company-town indentured slavery.

Meanwhile, the IMF deal is already showing its true face, as across the board budget cuts begin to shut down healthcare centers around the country, and as the already swamped and under-funded social services try to point out that they need more funding to deal with this crisis instead of less.

Of course, if the IMF stays true to form, less is what they’re going to get. The last decade has seen a prolonged and active effort on behalf of the neo-liberal government to purposely under fund and mismanage the Ministry of Health, of Education, and all the programs that make (made?) up Iceland’s welfare system in order to give them the usual excuses of “efficiency” and “free market capitalism” for selling off these public assets into the hands of their cronies.

Just like they sold off the fishing rights.

Just like they sold off the Postal Service.

Just like they sold off Siminn.

Just like they sold of the banks.

I think it’s high time we refuse to be sold into debt slavery to protect those responsible for most of the debt. I think it’s high time to refuse to be punished for fraud perpetrated by others.

Those currently being held hostage by their debts to the old banks should refuse payment until a just and equitable solution can be found. In the meantime, they should band together to prevent, by force if necessary, the coming wave of evections and repossessions. People are more important than property.

Every fishing crew of every ship should refuse to pay the kvota kings the tithe they were granted by a corrupt Parliament. The fish in the sea are a communal property, and no-one has the right, or can be granted the right, to demand payment from those doing the work for the right to work.

Those who work the land should band together, defy regulations, and sell their produce directly to the people, without going through the government-mandated middlemen who profit from their appointed positions regardless of the harm they do their own people with inflated prices for consumers and deflated prices for producers, or the price-gouging corporate supermarkets run by a cabal of career con artists.

Anyone needing shelter should simply move into any of the multitude of empty buildings scattered around the country in the wake of the building bubble’s bust. There is no fucking excuse whatsoever for homelessness in a nation as small as Iceland.

And finally, if Parliament will not bow to the will of those they were meant to serve, if they will not step down, then We the People of Iceland, native and foreign born, men, women, children and youths, elders, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, irrespective of faith, creed, or political leanings should rise up and establish new, more just, more equitable, more practical institutions to replace those we shall overthrow.

Declare your independence!

You don’t even have chains to lose.

They’ve been repossessed.

*A good friend of mine purchased a car two years ago by taking over a loan. The car is a good, fuel-efficient, cheap vehicle, and the loan was, at the time, very reasonable. After two years of paying more than the minimum payments, she now owes more for the car than when she took over the debt. The same sort of financing was used on indentured servants sent to British colonies to prevent them from ever paying off their debts and hence enslaving them for life, if not the life of their children as well.

With apologies to the bard...

2008-11-19T13:07:00.000-08:00

...but is the winter of our discontent to be made glorious summer by this son of a bitch???

Sustainability Now!

2008-11-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

I’ll be the first to admit that the title of this particular blog lacks emotional punch. It just doesn’t have the same oomph as “No Gods! No Masters!” or “No War but Class War” or “All Power to the People”. Hell, it doesn’t even beat out “Davið Burt” when it comes to eliciting an emotional response.

Which is a damn shame.

What Iceland, hell, what the world needs most right frigging now is sustainability. All those other issues, from human rights to anti-capitalism/anti-globalization to social and economic equality would take a quantum leap if we’d just be practical about shit.

And sustainability is practical. Radically so.

The central tenet of sustainability is adaptation. Not whether something is “natural” or not. The idea of “natural” has gotten all turned around, co-opted by advertising, and used by some of those who protest our impact on the environment to further the already gaping mental chasm between “humans” and “nature”.

We are part of nature. Therefore, everything we create is in essence, natural. The 100% bio-organic gluten-free rice milk drunk by vegans is as natural as the Diet Coke others wash down their Big Macs with. The “naturalness” of things isn’t the issue. Its how well adapted they are.

Most of our current technologies, from manufacturing “raw materials” to the finished products are terribly none-adaptive. Far from following the patterns of the ( non-human) natural world, whereby with very few exceptions everything operates on a nearly-closed loop (if sunlight is taken as an external factor), chemistry is carried out in water, all energy derives from current (as opposed to fossil) sunlight, food is produced and consumed locally, and variety is not only the spice of life, but one of its driving forces, our technologies (and this includes our economies, money is a technology, as well as our political institutions) are centralized and monopolistic, do most of their chemistry in “organic solvents” like benzene, derive most of their power from fossil sources (petro-carbons and radioactive isotopes) and actively strive to separate consumer from producer, not only in miles and kilometers but in mentality as well.

The end result is a non-adaptive way of life. And that which cannot or refuses to adapt will die off.

When I talk about sustainability, I’m not talking about some dippy-hippy patchouli-soaked leaky-roofed commune. I’m talking about a system of survival that would increase the material, cultural, and political welfare of the majority of people on this planet. Hell, if you look at over-consumption and toxic wealth as the bad things they are, even those currently “benefiting” from the current non-adaptive system would benefit, if only in the same way a junkie benefits from going cold turkey.

So what kinds of technologies are sustainable, i.e. adaptive?

Well, as Iceland has already become the canary in the global economic coalmine, let’s use it as an example. Currently almost all of Iceland’s fuel (including the bio-diesel proudly advertised by the bus system) is imported, which is ridiculously non-adaptive. Even leaving out the super-abundant energy resources like geo-thermal, hydro-electric, and the stunning underused wind, Iceland could still easily fuel its admittedly over-sized fleet of internal combustion vehicles locally, first by closing the loop, and then by local production (which would have the added benefit of cleaning the air).

To close Iceland’s fuel loop, we have to take a hint from nature and look at what is currently defined (and reviled) as “waste” as a resource. Reykjavik currently fuels all its garbage trucks on methane produced from household “waste”, but as smart as this idea is, it ignores all the other “waste” that could be converted. On farms, this is a very simple process. Animal waste is placed in airtight containers at around 30-40˚ C, and the natural process of decomposition produces methane, which is then filtered off into storage tanks. Methane can be used to fuel vehicles, heat homes, provide energy for manufacturing, cooking, you name it. As an added benefit, by purposely harnessing methane that is produced by animal waste whether we harness it or not and burning it (producing CO2) we prevent it leaking into the atmosphere where it does roughly ten times the greenhouse damage as CO2. If every chicken, pig, sheep, and dairy farm in Iceland made these simple and inexpensive changes, Iceland could cut its dependency on imported fossil fuels by at least 30%. Probably more. In the process, struggling farms would reap a net benefit in reduced fuel costs, a net profit on the sale of excess methane to consumers, and the entire food-production chain in Iceland would be come much less liable to catastrophic failure due to interruptions in foreign trade.

But why stop at the countryside? Humans, no matter how bitchy some folk get when you mention it to them, are animals. This means we can produce methane from our own waste as well. Currently human waste is processed in sewage plants that use those aforementioned (expensive) organic solvents to sterilize said waste before it is pumped (along with the toxic residuals of the sterilization process) into the coastal waters of Icelandic cities and towns. All this requires expense in the form of energy to run said plants, energy to manufacture said chemicals, energy to ship said chemicals here, and nets no resources in the end.

Now, if said waste were allowed to be broken down in a continuous feed methane digester, making use of biological enzymes and organisms to fully break down the waste (cellulose from paper can be broken down into fructose by amoeba found in termites, for instance) and the methane harvested and used to fuel the plant, the waste, now slurry, could then be pumped into a tank containing yeast, which would further break down the sewage, as well as producing trace methanol and a lot of ethanol, both of which kill off other, more harmful organisms, like disease bacteria.

(This is why yeast makes the stuff in the first place. Yeast evolved the ability to create a waste product (ethanol) that kills off other microorganisms. When you think about it, we get drunk off of yeast-poo.)

The alcohol could then be distilled by heating the slurry (with either geothermal heat or by using some of the methane) producing a methanol/ethanol mix suitable for fueling cars, and further sterilizing the slurry with heat. The end products of such a process would be two fuels (methane and ethanol) and highly nitrogen enriched organic matter perfect for use as fertilizer, say to spread on the large areas of barren sand currently threatening farm land in parts of the country and hence increasing the tillable soil and the possibility of stable, prosperous and self-sustaining food supply?

Other wastes can likewise be converted to fuels. Take all the used cooking oil that goes into feeding Iceland’s French fry habit. Having worked in my fair share of Reykjavik restaurants, I can tell you that most of this oil winds up either dumped down the sinks, or worse yet, down the nearest storm drain under cover of darkness. This is because the owners are usually loath to pay for disposing of waste oil properly.

(The fact that many of these owners were also loathe to pay proper wages is subject for another blog.)

This waste oil, along with the oil that can be produced from fish offal (internal organs, skin, and the heads of fish are the oiliest bits) that is currently either composted (stinky!) or thrown back into the sea from factory trawlers, can easily be converted to bio-diesel by filtration, amalgamation (whereby the various oils are heated together to expel water and become a single composite oil), and catalyst separation with methanol (remember where that can be produced???) and lye (which can be produced by filtering boiling water through ashes, say from a solid waste incinerator or wood-gas truck?) to separate the glycerin (which can be converted into fertilizer, as well as a host of other useful things) from the hydrocarbons in the oil, producing bio-diesel.

All this without even bothering to grow any rapeseed or hemp, both of which can be used to produce oil both for food and for bio-diesel (the “waste product” or which is seed mash, an excellent animal feed), both of which can be grown here in Iceland, and both of which fix more C02 from the atmosphere than the fuels they produce put back in. The C02 doesn’t just go into the plant oil, you see. It also goes into the plant itself, which by the way leaves us with straw (in the case of rapeseed, which can be baled and used to build extremely strong and well-insulated structures) and fiber (in the case of hemp, which can, and has been and is being, used in producing rope, cloth, paper, and composite materials). Failing that, its compost, which is a good thing in and of itself.

Speaking of compost, here in Reykjavik, they cut a lot of grass every summer; due to the city’s love-affair with open grassy stretches of traffic dividers and parks (oddly school-grounds tend to be completely paved). Add to that the amount of grass cut in private yards, the tree and shrub trimmings, the leafs, the weeds, and the paper litter, and you get a massive pile of compost and a massive fuel bill for all those lawnmowers and tractors.

The resulting “yard waste”, for reasons that bugger all imagination, is often stored in an open pile in the middle of one of the city’s most popular parks, right next to the playground and public grills, leaking methane and stench all summer long.

When it’s done stinking up the park, the compost is then shipped out of town to composting center. This is a good thing, but the process could be sped up a bit, and all those lawnmowers (don’t even get me started on the idiotic hover mowers Rvk supplies to its summer job program) fueled, by using first using termite amoeba to break down the cellulose in the compost, then distilling fuel alcohol from the resulting mash which could then be made into compost.

Hell, it could be sent through a bio-fuel sewage plant as mentioned above with the same end result.

Which is not to say that Reykjavik really should plant some more trees and allow for community gardens instead of huge wasteful and hard to maintain patches of ill-cared for lawn…

Ok. Ok. I digress, I know.

So does all this have to do with issues ranging from “human rights to anti-capitalism/anti-globalization to social and economic equality”?

Well for starters, technologies of this sort are “democratic” in that they tend to be decentralized and local. Decentralized local production tends to enrich the community around it, instead of siphoning wealth and resources out of a community. This tends to empower the people of said community, and empowered people are the essence of democracy. Likewise, these technologies work best on the small-scale/human scale, as opposed to the corporate scale, which gives people an increased say in how they are run. Likewise, such production is only economically viable when consumed within a limited geographic area, as the savings from local production are nullified by the cost of long-distance shipping. Take that globalization.

While there is the potential for profit from such undertakings, there is considerably less potential for monopolization, due to the fact that these technologies require very little capital to set up, and are not, nor ever should be, proprietary, i.e. patented. So anyone with requisite knowledge and ability can set one up. This prevents the funneling of economic power into the hands of a few (say a group of oil execs who’ve been price-gouging their fellow citizens for years, despite having been found guilty of price-fixing?) and hence makes for a more equitable society, as economic power and political power are two sides of the same corrupt coin and the unequal accumulation of one leads directly to the unequal accumulation of the other. Which generally leads to disrespect for human rights, as those unequally empowered try to keep those interested in empowering themselves from getting their fair share.

Being locally produced, these resources would be less affected by external markets and international events. So fuel produced in Dalvik would likely remain at the same price even if another war flared up in the Middle East. Aside from that obvious positive point, it would also mean that non-representative trans-national institutions, like the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and so on, would be much less able to dictate policy to local communities from their ivory towers abroad.

Finally, because these technologies aim to close the loop, instead of to produce as much as possible in the shortest period of time, they act as a brake on out-of-control economic “growth” and help stabilize local and national economies.

Its not just fuel production though. There're hundreds of other factors that make sustainable economics a positive step towards real democracy and real equality. Like not being dependent on corporations that are required by law to constantly grow, even when said growth is harmful, for your food, clothing, and energy. Like being able to make use of your fair share of a natural resource, in a sustainable manner, instead of having said resource, or the rights to it, sold off by a government into the hands of a powerful well-connected few.

Just think about it. Is the over-production of wasteful “goods” on which we currently depend by massive entities controlled by tiny minorities really a sign of progress towards those goals which most of us have in common? Is putting a different minority in charge really going to change things? Is over-producing different “goods” going to? Or do we need a new kind of economics, one that practices production by the masses for the masses rather than mass production, as E.F. Schumacher once wrote? And with that new economics, a new politics, one in which democracy really means rule by the people, directly? Isn't it high time to discard those institutions and structures that have systematically disenfranchised us for solutions that empower us?

I for one think its time we empowered ourselves not just politically, but economically.

Anyone out there a welder? A computer technician capable of putting together a monitoring system? Someone with experience working with volatile gasses and the compressors? A farmer who wants to give it a try?

Get in touch.

Let’s do this thing.

Sustainability Now!

If its too loud, you´ve been in power too long.

2008-11-17T10:24:00.000-08:00

Brigada Negra Cacophonica is seeking volunteers to make lots of noise!

As the Powers That Be in this country continue to turn a deaf ear to the will of the people, we've decided to crank the volume up to eleven and friggin' make them hear us.

Joining is easy. You just have to show up with a instrument of musical destruction, make loud rythmic noises with it, and maybe drum up a revolution!

Join now!

Stop Bitchin' and Start a Revolution Already!

2008-11-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

Enough of the speeches.

Enough bitching at your fellow protesters for not marching in your line.

Enough of this corrupt, incompetent, self-serving government.

We will not pay the debts of those who impoverished us.

We will not be quiet, sit still.

We will not be obedient.

We will be loud.

We will be raucous.

We will not be moved.

Bring drums.

Bring horns.

Bring pots to bang.

Paint your words on heavy shields, so the blows of those who would force us into silence will not harm us.

Cover your eyes so their venom will not sting.

Be angry.

Be joyous.

Be ready.

We don't just want a new life, a new society, a new start.

We need one.

And the only people who can make that happen are ourselves.

Just a quick note...

2008-10-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

...for all the útrassavíkingur and politicos and columnist who keep telling us that "we" are to blame for the Great Icelandic Financial Meltdown. I have just 5 words for you.

Speak for your own damn self!

Also: FUCK YOU!

We didn't throw the economy down the toilet. You did. a lot of us (myself included) didn't take out any damned loans, we didn't go on a credit bender, and we don't have a goodamned flat screen or a luxury SUV. Some of us do, but mostly because "we" were doing what people who have been robbed of all control over the structure of the world the live in do.

We tried to get by, and tried to be happy with the narrow limits you allowed us.

So go screw yourselves.

We know who's to blame, and WE WILL FIND YOU!

Jú sey jú vant a revólúsjón?

2008-10-31T05:44:00.000-07:00

I’m getting weirded out folks.

Seriously.

I’m used to the news pissing me off, and even more used to the op-eds in the Icelandic papers making me foam at the mouth.

For years now my friends and I have been crying out in the proverbial wilderness, shouting “Sustainability!”, “Self-Organization!”, “Economic Equality!”, and occasionally “Rise the Fuck Up Already!”

To absolutely no avail.

Then everything went straight to shit, as most of us knew it would.

Now the op-eds are filling up with intelligent discourse about sustainable economics, about the cronyism and corruption amongst Iceland’s elite. People are calling for a sea-change in how Icelanders make their living, calling for diversification, self-organization, and economic equality. They’re shooting their well aimed barbs at the white knights of aluminum and fish and the E.U.*

They’re even flirting with the idea of rising the fuck up.

Which is encouraging, if a tad disconboobalating.

That’s my own word by the way.

I mean, what the hell am I going to blog about now?

But I thought about it for a bit, and decided that I’d indulge in some magical thinking. Seeing as so very many of the issues and ideas I’ve blogged about in the past have sudden appeared on television and in print, I’m going to throw a few of my wilder ideas out there and see if they make it into the collective consciousness.

For starters, this Saturday will see the third major protest downtown in as many weeks, which is downright shocking by Icelandic standards. Originally a call for Davið Oddson to step down as head of the Central Bank, they’ve now (better late than never) become a call for new elections ASAP, aka kicking the bastards out. All fine and dandy. I’ll be there, I’ll meet you half way.

But consider for a moment a couple of points. Right now the Icelandic State is in deep financial doodoo, and in order to pull themselves out, they’ll need to slash public spending. This will mean less money for students, children, the disabled, fewer social services, increased fees for supposedly “free” healthcare, and more than likely a package of tax hikes and the downsizing of many a public employee.

Public employees mind, not public officials.

So how about we save ourselves a lot of money, and simply dissolve parliament? We’d save on their over-inflated wages, their retirement scam, their “day-money” that would take me two weeks to earn, their gas-guzzling official cars, private jet vaca…I mean meetings abroad, and their teams of sycophantic yes-people hired at public expense to do their jobs for them.

We then declare the Icelandic public to be the legislative power, giving the average Jón and Anna the right to propose laws, gather support for them, and then vote on them in twice yearly democracy days.

Meanwhile, we vote on who gets the ministerial positions, for a four year term. Instead of being political cake for unqualified politicos, they’d become administrative positions for people who can make them work, instead of purposely running them into the ground so that they can be gobbled up by Mammon. So we get healthcare professionals in charge of the Ministry of Health, and maybe, just maybe, a FUCKING ECONOMIST IN CHARGE OF THE CENTRAL BANK!

Likewise, let’s save some more tax money by teaching the State to stop eating itself. Student loans are not, repeat not, income. It’s a fucking loan. You have to pay it back. Why the hell do you have to pay income tax on it? The same can be said for disability payments. The State taxes the public to pay disability payments to those who cannot work and then taxes those same payments??? The same is true of pensions. What the fuck? Not to mention taxing the interest people make off of individual savings accounts.

How ‘bout this? Just declare disability payments, student loans, and pensions to be tax free. Then lower the amount paid out by the amount of taxes levied. Everyone gets the same amount of money and the state saves on the costs of processing all those unnecessary taxes.

Individual savings deposits should be tax free. Period.

Not only will this encourage people to save instead of borrow, but any government that is already charging me taxes on the money I bring in should keep its filthy corrupt piggy fingers out of what I manage save of the money I have left.

After all, like most of us, I can’t just vote myself a raise.

I know, I know. I’ve ranted this before. Doesn’t make it any less of a good idea.

Another thing I’ve been happy to hear is people talking about CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, whereby farmers sell directly to the public, hence cutting out the middlemen and getting a better price for themselves, while also providing the public with fresher, less processed, higher quality, and often cheaper food.

The problem with this is that when it comes to everything but vegetables, this is illegal in Iceland. You cannot, repeat cannot, legally sell dairy products, meat or fish direct from the producer. Instead you are required by law to sell (at an artificially low price) these products to State mandated middlemen who then sell them on to retailers who then sell it on to the consumers.

At an artificially high price.

Not to mention that because it has to go through the middlemen the food has to be shipped to the processing centers, often times located well away from the farms and communities it was produced in, processed, shipped to the retailers (through a series of warehouses), and finally comes back to the community either unripe and tasteless in the case of vegetables, or with all the fresh yummy goodness removed (in the case of many of the dairy products).

This is also why, up until the current foreign currency crunch, the cheapest fish you could buy in Iceland was frozen Peruvian cod sold under a Danish label.

From a supermarket located across the street from the fishing docks.

My solution for this is simple. BREAK THE DAMN LAW! If you are a producer, and you’re tired of selling your produce cheap, only to see it mixed in with other, possibly lower-quality produce, labeled with no information on where it came from, and then sold at a ridiculously high price to consumers who then blame you for their empty wallets, STOP!

Sell it direct to the public. Screw the law.

Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right

And just because something is illegal doesn’t make it wrong.

Witness the guys who have been out fishing without a kvóta to protest the privatization of a national resource. Fishermen have started it, farmers can join the parade.

Likewise, anyone who is currently paying full price for electricity to run their greenhouses or software companies should immediately subtract 95% from their electric bill, so they pay the same rate as Alcan and Alcoa.

Personally, I’d love it if I could get away with subtracting the percentage of my taxes that goes into the pockets and retirement funds of parliamentarians. Not to mention the percentage that goes to the State Church and a law enforcement and immigration authority run by a person who anywhere with actual free speech (where one can state an opinion without being dragged into court for libel) could be described as a paranoid fascist bootlicker with a uniform fetish.

But hey whatcha gonna do?

While we’re at it, let’s renationalize the kvóta system, and grant each and every community that has a harbor a percentage of the total catch, based on population and infrastructure (meaning that communities with limited economies would get a bigger share, not smaller). Said community can then split their percentage amongst those who wish to fish, charging a small percentage of the gross profit to fund public services. Sound good?

Let’s start up a few companies while we’re at it. And by “companies” I mean Sf., not Ehf. and definitely not Hf. Cooperative companies that recycle paper, aluminum, old tires, plastics, etc and sell their products back into the Icelandic market, helping to balance out our trade deficit. Cooperative companies producing food, clothing, building materials, energy, tools and hardware, electronics, software, electric vehicles (trains trains trains!), and tourist/recreational services.

Cooperative companies, wherein all employees are partial owners, and more importantly wherein all owners are required to be employees. Co-opts in which all decisions regarding capital and profits are handled democratically and hence are intrinsically more egalitarian, and thereby inherently more stable, than companies run from the top down, whereby people with no real talent for massive responsibility reward themselves with massive bonuses and take massive ill-considered risks to justify said unequal pay. Co-opts are also more egalitarian that State-run companies, where the ruling elite reward their loyal toadies by appointing them the head of a national bank or television or other such foolishness…

So that’s it. A bit of constructive civil disobedience, a bit of self-organization, and a bit of reform, whereby we reform the institutions responsible for fucking us over for years now right out of existence, and bingo! Revolúsjón bæbí!

Dónt jú nó its góíng tú bí all ræt?

*'And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him...'

The Upside of Downturns

2008-10-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

In order to comply with the new government regulations requiring all discussion of current events in Iceland to be positive, optimistic, and generally complacent, I hereby present you with the the upside of economic downturn.

For starters, men's fashion will improve. No more faggoty-assed pink shirts. No more striped blond hair artfully moused. No more orange-skinned hairless yuppie freaks. They can't afford to look that ridiculous anymore. Men will look like men again. Beards will be back in fashion, 'cause who can afford razors? Long hair or buzz cuts will be the rule, and full-body-waxed spray-tanned Armani-clad cads will no longer be considered hip og kul.

Women will start to look like women again, as opposed to the spray-painted Barbi clones that recently roamed the streets, as the price of cosmetics and snobby beauty parlors becomes prohibitory. One will once again be able to snog without first resorting to an electric paint stripper. Likewise, no more fat chicks. Thin will be in...evitable.

Stupidly non adaptive fashion will fade away. No longer will Icelanders shell out gazillions of krona for the latest pair of shoddy canvas low tops with pink skulls on them. People will start to wear boots instead, because they last, and because its friggin cold when you walk to work, instead of driving there in your giant four-wheel drive penis extension.

The stupid tradition of wearing an overpriced piece of useless silk around one's neck to show social/economic superiority will fade as no-one is able to afford them, and the surplus is re-sewn into much needed undergarments.

The streets will be safer, as fewer and fewer large vehicles whip around corners driven by people too busy talking on their 3G phones, drinking expensive coffee, trying to score more coke while wondering how much money they might make in shady financial deals that day.

Children will spend more time with their parents.

And finally, there will be increased opportunities for social interaction. Whether waiting for the bus, standing in line for soup, waiting for our ration cards, huddled together for warmth in the cold nights at the labor camps, or dancing through the streets to the light of flaming bank offices, we'll all be a little less lonely in the days to come.

Up and Down

2008-10-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

So I decided to update the Ipod my sis gave me a couple Xmases ago this morning.

I know. Two years to update a playlist. What kind of looser am I?

But to be honest, I don’t like walking around with earplugs blocking out the world, and so I mostly used the Ipod for transporting data to computers actually connected to the interwebs, and for playing the songs saved on it on my laptop, Selma.

My sis loaded my Ipod with a lot of great stuff. The nearly complete discography of NoFx for starters. Everything Gogol Bordello had put out up to two years ago. A bunch of Bif Naked.

All gone now.

Apparently the act of adding new songs to my Ipod erased all my previous stuff.

Fucking Apple.

I’m sure there’s some reason behind it. Something about “protecting copyrights” and “preventing piracy” or some such shit.

Steve Fucking Jobs can kiss my Luddite ass.

Couple this with a leaky nose and the fact that the only effect the kreppa’s had on me is that I can’t afford to get the stuff I need to continue my remodel until next payday and am hence sitting around with work that wants doing and nothing to do the work with, and you’d expect me to grumpy as all hell, right?

I’m not.

It’s snowing. Big fluffy whiteness drifting down like a Xmas song. In October!

Thanks Ma Nature.

I needed that.

The Canary And The Phoenix

2008-10-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, as man first began to take advantage of fossil fuels, namely coal, canaries were carried down into the mines as an early-warning system. Because of their small size and fast metabolism, these little birds pass out, or even die from poisonous gas or asphyxiation long before miners feel any effects. Hence, when the canary dies, you get the hell out of the mine shaft.

Iceland is a small nation, and like most small nations, is inherently more susceptible to changes in the world environment, at least when it gets dragged down the mine-shafts of globalization.

Like the coal miner’s canary, what happened here is a forewarning of what could or will happen elsewhere, if people fail to get the hell out of the mines.

This doesn’t help those of us here in Iceland all that much. The damage has been done, and for all the harping on about Russian loans and the IMF, we need to recognize that the heyday of Viking Economics is over. Iceland will not be a international financial superpower.

Let me repeat that: Iceland will not be an international financial superpower.

Get over it.

Our waxy wings got way too close to the sun and we burned.

This may not be a bad thing. As Octavia E. Butler pointed out in her semi-prophetic Parable of the Sower:

In order to rise from its ashes
A Phoenix
First
Must
Burn.

I for one hope that we rise from our ashes.

I hope that the “New Iceland” everyone is talking about will be a triumphant thing, an affirmation of hope and reason and community, a vision of a prosperous, flourishing island, a well-balanced blend of town and country. Productive farms feeding and fueling clean cities, small scale industry supporting electric rails and new aluminum boats, sailing out to fish and trade on the wind, recycling plants turning what was once wasted into a resource, and cities bustling with the work of “knowledge factories” ,the schools and information companies. I hope for horizontal organization, from the bottom up instead of the top down. Real democracy, of the people, by the people, and for the people.

None of this is going to happen though. Not unless we make some hard choices and throw out a great many outdated and self-destructive habits.

The most damning of which is looking to Authority to solve all our problems.

Right now, the very same people who caused this crisis, either by their blind faith in the dogma of the Church of the Invisible Hand*, or by passive acquiescence to said doctrines have the unmitigated gall to don the mantle of salvation and claim that they and they alone can save us from the very reckoning they called down on us. These same people, falsely cloaked in Authority, will stand in the way of nearly every effort to build a new and better Iceland, because a new and better Iceland will have no use for them, for their cronies in big business, for their closed-door party meetings, for passing laws without debate, for musical-chair ministers and some-pigs-are-more-equal-than-others retirement schemes.

No!

Just no, damn it!

NO MORE!

No more of your vested interests. No more claiming brides as speaking fees. No more of your transparent scapegoating, kicking down hostel doors to distract us from your fraud. No more funneling the nation’s wealth into the pockets of your supporters.

You had your chance. Hell, you’ve had more than a chance. You have had chances, plural, each more pressing than the last and each more shameful.

When the canary started to sicken at the rising price of food and fuel, did you look the truth in the eye, recognize that oil is on its way out, and push for a nationwide move away from that poisonous black gold and towards sustainable domestic production?

No you did not.

You threw some crumbs to the crowds, little phrases like “bio-diesel” (imported, despite the fact it could be manufactured here) and “the hydrogen economy” (to date nothing but a pipe dream). You talked about destroying what little is left of Icelandic agriculture in favor of “cheap” imported food, instead of moving to build up agriculture, creating jobs, sustenance, and fuel in the process.

When the Housing Bubble burst, as anyone with eyes could see it would, did you move swiftly and effectively to soften the blow? No. You knelt at the alter of the Invisible Hand and hoped for the best, only taking action long after it could have had any real effect, and then only to insure the banks would pay no consequences for their predatory lending schemes.

Worse yet, when it became clear that the Banking Bubble was going to burst, you did nothing, even as the greedy few dragged the many into debt while lining your own pockets with 30 (thousand) pieces of silver. Then, to pile incompetence on inaction, you moved with misguided zeal to “save” the banks, dragging the nation down to prop up institutions that according to your own oft-stated believe in competitive markets should have been allowed to fail, taking their overpaid captains down with them.

Now you spout drivel about heavy industry, which will put the nation further in debt, whilst reaping a meager harvest of jobs and cash and a whirlwind of environmental damage. You bat your eyes like a courtesan at a tyrant to bail out our banks, and look to an organization that once tried to privatize an entire country’s water supply and sell it to Coca-Cola for advice on how to restructure. You tell people their pensions will be slashed, while using the crisis to excuse the continuation of your own embezzled “retirement” funds, and claim to investigate yourselves when you can’t even pass a law on public disclosure.

By your actions and by your inaction, you have forfeited any claim to leadership.

You who claim Authority over Iceland have failed the people time and again, and it is high time that people shook you off their backs. We don’t care how hard you work now to prop up the tottering house of cards you built.

Let it fall.

Let it burn.

Then get the hell out of our way so we can build something better from the ashes.

All the golden gilt in the world doesn’t make it any less a cage.

We’re tired of being your canary.

*If we could see the Invisible Hand of The Marketplace, it would be giving us the finger.