On your own

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We both took Friday off of work to go to Lintsi as Jarkko had been wanting to go all summer long but we somehow never managed to make it over the past few months and its last day of the season was Sunday. Normally, we go with friends which is a lot of fun but, more importantly, it means that I can avoid going on what I call the 'sick rides', the ones that spin violently, because there are enough people to accompany each other on the rides I am less than enthused about. :) After riding on the Viking Ship, my stomach never quite recovered. There's something about zero gravity that makes me rather glad that I never even thought about being an astronaut when I was a kid. We also had a chance to say goodbye to the ferris wheel which will be decommissioned this winter and replaced with a larger one next year. It was a quaint old ride that fit with the scale of the rest of the park and I hope they don't go too crazy with the replacement.

The rest of the weekend was spent madly baking pies for a flickr virtual pie contest that several people suggested I enter which gave me an excuse to use more of the mountain of lingonberries I still have after collecting 2 big buckets full of them a week ago. I might be the only entrant in a contest and still not win, but it was fun to make them and I have fewer lingonberries than I did on Friday. Sunday was one of those days you wake up, move to the sofa and proceed to vegetate with that nagging feeling of guilt that you really should be doing something even marginally productive but never quite manage to make it past thinking about it. Even Otava seemed a bit under the weather and was not terribly insistent that we take him on a hike to the woods. I'll be making another pie and a cake tonight to whittle down the pile of berries even more. My colleagues don't seem to be complaining.

I tried to write something coherent about the absolutely appalling situation in NO, but kept drifting off to sleep yesterday. Techies are, of course, saying that what they need are computers, networks and gadgets when it's seems clear that the lack of communication in NO is not for want of gizmos but bureaucratic red tape. Computers have rarely made communication better, only easier to be lazy about it and in a crisis like Katrina, lazy bureaucrats don't get very far, with or without a wi-fi hotspot and a snazzy iBook. I keep gaping at the stories and pictures and wonder how it's possible that it has degenerated into partisan bickering and the religious crazies who seem to be fond of saying that their god punished the sinful town of NO though they never dared to say the same about NYC and the twin towers four years ago.

It's difficult to watch all this from a distance and wonder how it is that the people of the US aren't fighting mad with the sham that is 'homeland security' and the pathetic excuse of an agency FEMA has appeared to be in the last two weeks. I'm pretty sure I don't give a damn about the ugly politics involved, but a country so ill-prepared for a known probable disaster, much less a surprise attack, extends well beyond Republican vs. Democrat. CNN interviewed a few international journalists about their impression of the 3rd world images from NO and the most frequent comment was how surprised they were that the US has such poverty. I suppose they've been watching Friends too much as if that show were real, with their incomes they'd all be living in a box under a bridge.

In reality though, most people with comfortable middle class lives likely find it hard to really get too worked up about a largely poor, black population that has been portrayed as violent and opportunistic by the press. Getting outraged with the people at the top who are responsible for managing this sort of crisis but who just totally fucked the poverty stricken inhabitants of NO might upset the balance of self-deception and white collar ambitions. I mean, if you have money, you're safe, right? Perhaps.

It's a good time to buy doomsday stocks since smart middle class people will start preparing their own disaster shelters and escape plans given that they are either unwilling or incapable of mustering sufficient outrage that might change the current corrupt government that has shown that you're on your own more or less.

And you just have to wonder how the US would fend off an attack back home if some random country decided to take advantage of the glaring weakness and vulnerability that Katrina exposed so easily. If this is the 'stronger, safer America' that people bought into during the last election, it's no wonder that the fundies are expecting the apocalypse real soon now.

On a happier note, those who remember Rare Exports, Inc. will be happy to know that the sequel, Rare Exports, Inc. 2, being shown at the upcoming film festival. From the brief description it would appear that a scandal comes to the santa export business.