Ring ring ring

So apparently my joy over the previously unknown internets at my domicile in progress was a tad premature. Like boobs on a five year old.

There's internets, but its a dial-up connection of the squishy-screechy telephone sounds variety that can barely load hotmail, let alone my blog.

Poop.

But other than that, things are looking up. At least for me. I love being right.

If I'd been blogging regularly up til now, you'd have all read a massive rant championing the squatting of all of the 57 some odd "abandoned" (read: Left to fall apart/be vandalized/burnt down because "undesirables" are living in them so that the owners can a)collect insurance and b) get away with tearing them down despite iffy permission and protest from neighbors and residents in order to build ugly glass yuppy cages). Thankfully, the times they are a changin' and at least one group has already taken it upon themselves to announce that squatting is not a form of theft, which has always been the Icelandic take on it, but a form of repossession, as the slumlord owners have forfeited their already dubious property rights to the building in question by simple act of abandonment.

More power to 'em! I say take all of the abandoned places over. With 20 square meter unfurnished basement rooms in commercial buildings in BFE being rented out for 70+K a month, I say take 'em over! Downtown could see a resurgence of culture. Reading rooms, galleries (not art retailers) concert spaces, co-op daycares, Free Schools, you name it. The economy may be in tatters (not really but who am I to swim against the rising tide of hyperbole) but this opportunity is manna from motherfuckin' heaven for those of us who's economies were already in tatters. Like Dr. Gummi said "Velgengi var diskó, kreppan er pönk!"*

Then there's the on-going brouhaha (or maybe its a brou-hehe) over one of the mp's comments about chicken and pork farming not being "real farming" and hence that the tariffs placed on imported chicken and pork should be dropped.

Fine. Let 'em drop.

The thing is though, the other current shit-fan over here has been the nationwide protest by professional truckers (as well as spoiled yuppies with penis-extension monster trucks and their spoiled yuppie spawn with their brand new fermingavespar**) over high fuel prices.

Now I'll leave it be that these protests, which have been shutting down the major traffic arteries around the country, have resulted in a few fines but no arrests, and in fact have been carried out with the co-operation of the police, whilst last summer when Saving Iceland shut down Suðurlandsbraut on foot they were rounded and roughed up and thrown in the hoosegow.

I'll leave that point be.

But the one and only fuel (aside from electricity) that hasn't gone up in price since the Fall of the Almighty Króna has been methane, which RVK uses to power its garbage trucks. Methane made from waste, produced locally (saving both on costs both the the environment and the budget) and funneling money back into the local economy at a time when international debts and deficit trading are causing the local currency to fall. Converting diesel engines to run on methane involves little more than switching the glow-plugs for spark plugs, adjusting the carburetor a bit, and installing gas-canisters in place of fuel tank, at which point these same truckers would be able to gas up for roughly half the price they currently pay.

And what's the best source of methane, you ask? Pig and chicken shit mainly. The same pig and chicken shit that is currently causing all manner of health and pollution issues out in the countryside. If converted to methane, the unfarmers would have a second cash crop as well as a cleaner (and if the use a methane/ethanol digester, sterile) fertilizer in place of their harmful runoff.

Problem solved.

Tomorrow, stay tuned for Sam's Grand Punk Railroad scheme.

*"Prosperity was disco, recession is punk"

**Seemingly every sixteen year old (or even much younger) kid in my neighborhood seems to have forsaken their clean and healthy (and oft-times super expensive) mountain bike for a fucking gas-powered Vespa.