Ouch. That’s Hot.

Many hold that a laissez-faire, free-market economy is by far the best if driven by the self-imposed principal of Enlightened Self-Interest.  Obviously, “enlightened” is a hard word to define, especially when faced with competition from the “unenlightened” that might sink your business and ruin everything you’ve built if you’re not similarly cut-throat and compromising.  But is it too much to ask of the Masters Of The Universe to stop and ponder the real cost of their actions?  Anyway, I’m not one to get into politics or economic theory on my blog (above my pay grade, as it were) but I’d like to break stride and re-post an entry by my dear friend Kingtycoon Mathoslah:

Senator:

I would like to take a moment to register my request that you do not allow the president and the treasury secretary’s plans to come to fruition. Please take a moment to understand why I might adopt a position seemingly in variance with the public good.

Look: Presently the lingo and the catch phrase seems to be wall street versus main street. Perhaps as an educated person, a Senator no less, you can see the foolishness of the dichotomy. Really what is at variance is this - those of us who are the victims of financial malfeasance & who will pay for it – and the perpetrators. For decades there has been no main street- so far as I can see the entire country has been placed at the mercy of the global free-marketers - People without any scruple or an ounce of goodwill for their countrymen. I live in Cuyahoga County where the damage done by those who thought it better to gamble on China or India rather than reinforce the position of the American People is readily observable. We have been taken advantage of by manufacturers led by financiers who have seen the growth of stock value as a greater good than the good of their own country and people. We have seen that Wall Street will tolerate any amount of carnage in the insignificant provinces – that is, any place that is not New York City or Washington DC. We have endured a longstanding attack on our society by the few and unspeakably wealthy. Now they require not just that our region’s economy collapse, not just that we serve at their pleasure in the workplace – but that we support them totally when their reckless mistakes have unpleasant repercussions for them.

Go to the Slavic Village and see what bankers have decided to make of the state of Ohio – go and see how they have taken cruel advantage of desperate people. Go and see what the president is now asking for the taxpayers to subsidize…

The financial services sector has never been anything but a house of cards- a precarious arrangement of gambling balanced by greed – it’s at the very least distasteful to decent people – but currently it’s been made the heart of our entire republic. Currently we are at the mercy of markets that have worked against every part of the American polity in favor of expanding the wealth of the few.

Please don’t make me pay for the destruction of my region, my city and my country’s principles.

Thank you.

The silence is deafening!

My impish corner of the blogging empire — a little half-moon of qwerty merriment emanating from the central vineyard — has taken some hits lately.  [Further documentation here and here --ed.]  I suppose that my M.I.A. status, both online and geographically, would place me squarely on the presumed casualty list.

But nothing can be further from the truth!  I’ve just been lost.  Lost in a wilderness of my own making.  Lost in a hazy half-light of murmuring responsibilities and flickering fears.  Anxieties and agitations. Split-minded sputtering.  Stuttering. Wet-fish flopping on the rocks, one gill in the water, one in the air, watching the sun skirt the horizon, unsure if it’s dusk or if it’s dawn. All of which doesn’t lend itself to creative thinking.

And without dipping my tongue into the Well Of Creation, without slaking the urge to see words and sights and sounds rise up ex nihilo before me, I’ve got nothing else to give.  If I cannot create, I can only consume.  If I cannot feed my mind, I revert to feeding my belly.  My belly’s been happy.  [Thankfully, Grant just joined a gym --ed.]

So, now that I’ve broken the silence and tested your unearned patience with my navel-gazed rambling, here’s a little fun:

A bunch of British Lego-heads have been making album covers out of Legos and posting them to a flickr site here. The visual pun on the title of Kate’s album made me smile.  I hope it does the same for you.  More blogging to come!