Anyone who has ever been to New York City knows it’s a trip, and anyone who has ever taken a New York City taxi has had an adventure. We had one such adventure yesterday. We were with my grandfather in New York City. A few of us don’t walk well, and so we needed a cab to go a relatively short distance.
What you’re looking at is 2nd Ave. We were at the green dot and wanted to go to the red dot. That’s between three and four blocks. And so it’s a bit hard to imagine, but the taxi cab got lost. He figured out that he was lost when both my grandfather and I started yelling at him, “You’re going the wrong way!”
Meter off.
Back in the U.S.S.R.
You may have thought the Soviet Union long dead, and thus it should be, but it is not. When the Berlin Wall tumbled, so did an entire corrupt way of life for many bureaucrats and butchers. But under Boris Yeltsin an entire new wave of corruption came to exist in the form of the oligarghs. The reaction to those thieves was Vladamir Putin, who even though his puppet has been installed, still runs the show in Moscow.
Under Putin, yet another wave of thugery has gone on. One cannot criticize the government. Crime still runs rampant, only now it’s organized. Gangs run massive botnets. The Soviets have kicked out all foreign entrepeneurs they don’t like (read: anyone who invested in oil). And now the coup de grace: they are attacking their neighbors in Georgia.
President Bush has stood idly by and let all of this happen. The real threat isn’t Iraq, it’s Mr. Putin and his thugs. Perhaps he’s scared of getting beat up for saying these sorts of things. I am.
Read someone else’s blog for now. Back next week.
Out to Lunch. Not here. Expect no updates for a little while. Go away. Read somebody else’s rants for a while.
Conversation with a god
Of those who like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, only some can stomach The Silmarillion. Tolkien was able to keep people rapt with attention in the former, but the latter is for die hards who wanted to understand how it all fit together. I fall into the latter camp, but even so it took me several tries to get through. Here now is an imaginary interview with the head honcho of that book, Eru Illuvatar, copied without permission from Gods Gossip, the god trade rag.
GG: So Eru, what makes you different from other gods?
E: Well, to start with, I give away the ending in the beginning. Most gods try to keep all their cards to themselves, revealing only obliquely their designs. Not me. You get through the first chapter and you know where we end up. I’m a little cagey about where things end up, of course.
GG: For example?
E: I all but told that schnook Melkor what’s going to happen. He had a choice. They all had choices. He could have not gone into the world. Others didn’t. He had the crap kicked out of him. Twice! I guess I gave him mush for brains.
GG: Your colleagues approach creation differently. Are you a moral god?
E: I like to think so. But I really don’t need to be in the bedroom of every elf, man, or (so help myself) dwarves. And really to me it has never been about who kills who. If it were, the theme would have been sedate, and I probably would have fallen asleep creating the world, and that wouldn’t have been good. And all this praying. I mean really. Does anyone think I really am not paying attention? No sycophants for me in my world. Except for Manwë.
GG: You say you don’t care who kills who. But then what was your goal?
E: I like balance. Perhaps it’s not balance between good or evil as my unofficial biographer had put it, but just about power. Melkor set himself up to topple everyone else, and then his successor tried the same thing. In the end it was a close call in both cases. I know it looks like I couldn’t
GG: How successful would you rate yourself on your ability to achieve balance?
E: Quite successful. I mean it took two midgets and a lunatic to tip the scales.
GG: People always wonder about wizards. Can you say a bit more about them?
E: Wizard this and that. The biggest mistake a god can make is going the wizard route. It’s really hard to achieve balance if you have a few people who have more weight than the others. I mean, look at Harry Potter. Why is he so great as opposed to others? It really does gnaw at me.
GG: I’m sorry – I meant your wizards.
E: Emm. Right. Well, I really didn’t want them to play a big role in my world. Really they were meant to be more of an information conduit, so that elves and men took the hint that there might yet be a problem. I only gave them a little something extra to get peoples’ attention, but then my mind wandered in song. As you’ve no doubt noticed, I gave free will to everyone, so far as they could tell. Heh.
GG: Got a favorite god you look up to?
E: Me. Who else?
GG: Right. Just joking. Thanks for taking the time with us today.
E: I take the time every day.
Happy Swiss Confederation Day
On this happy occasion, let us take a few minutes to discuss some of the benefits of living in Switzerland. To start with, people are polite to a fault. Our family has been treated with the utmost respect the entire time we have been here. In our town, people greet each other in passing with Greuzi, and they say good-bye when they part.
While the trains run with well known precision, what is not so known is that you can get virtually anywhere in Switzerland through the extensive network of not only trains but also buses. The trains are also kept clean not only by the SBB, but also by the passengers themselves. One need look only so far as the neighboring countries to understand that it is hard to keep the transit system clean, and easy to create a mess. The Swiss have worked hard. Most of what we need is close at hand. That includes two supermarkets, three bakeries, day care, two post offices, several banks, a pool.
Joanna enjoys swimming, and for a very reasonable amount she can do so nearly every day of the year. How reasonable? What we pay in a year here wouldn’t cover the cost of the service in California for a month. But don’t get the impression that Switzerland is a socialist state, for it is perhaps the least socialist state in Europe. We do not have a social healthcare system, but we do pay a very reasonable fee per month for insurance. When we want to see a doctor, we see one. Not a nurse, but a doctor.
While I have come to realize that there is no perfect place, Switzerland is even attempting to do away with some of the things I would think of as flaws. Smoking here has dropped dramatically, even in the time we’ve lived here.
So here’s to you, Switzerland! Maybe next year I’ll recite this auf Deutsch!