The Law Rock
My family has a history of being disappointed by rocks. Read More
ByGD
My First Golden Circle Tour
I left the pub after 11, a little before rúntur got started. I had wondered if Icelanders dress up for Halloween – either Reykjavik teens really top rave fashion, or the answer is “yes, on the closest weekend.” But I didn’t stay to find out more; I had a Golden Circle tour booked for 8 am pickup Saturday, and didn’t want to miss the bus. So I was in bed by midnight.
A slamming door woke me at 3 am. At 3:30, I got up and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Then I tossed and turned for a long time. I thought to myself, I’ll just check the time, and if it’s after 4:30, I’ll get up. It was 5:15. So I got up, wrote up some notes, ate a big breakfast, and caught my bus promptly at 8 am. Read More
ByGD
Toilet Training
Broadly speaking, our assumptions are just generalizations of things we know to be true in specific instances. With every additional piece of knowledge, our assumptions become more reliable. Because actual experience sticks so much better than book learnin’ travel provides the double benefit of specific information in a format we will never forget.
For example:
Last night at the pub, I followed the “Toilet” sign directing me down the basement stairs. Read More
ByGD
Welcome to Iceland
Reykjavik Bay
After years of yearning and months of planning, I am finally in Iceland. There is always a bit of cognitive dissonance in the last few hours before a big trip; it’s impossible to quite comprehend that this time tomorrow, you will be in a completely different place that so far only exists in your imagination. I am grateful in a way for the almost uniform sterility of airports. Their almost-the-same blandness worldwide creates a sort of purgatory that helps one make the transition from here to there.
It has been something like 15 years since I traveled to Europe, (even now, Iceland only sort of counts) and five years since my last real travel adventure. I am certainly rusty. I had forgotten how much longer everything takes when you don’t know what you’re doing. When traveling east means returning to the familiar, you don’t notice how much worse the jet lag is in that direction. Read More
ByGD
Macklemore, DIY Job Creator
A lot of things have irritated me this election cycle, but few get under my skin as much as “jobs creation” as an election issue. It wasn’t until this week, when Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ completely DIY album hit number one on iTunes in America, Germany, and probably a couple other places, too, that I put together the messages of “Thrift Shop” and “Jimmy Iovine” to see just what was eating me about the jobs creation.
Jobs creators: A spin-doctored term for the oppressed minority of rich white men upon whose backs the rest of us stand, ungrateful for the jobs they have given us with their very life’s blood
The term assumes that jobs are created out of thin air the same way that jobs creators’ wealth is created on paper. It denies the possibility of jobs growing organically out of the work that actually needs to be done to sustain our lives on this planet.
“Jobs creation” treats jobs like commercial products that must be endlessly regenerated to keep the system rolling, whether the outputs of those jobs are actually valuable or not – which I guess is an accurate depiction of the current system.
Value Creators
Like Macklemore, I prefer to make wise use of the commercial products and jobs we already have, rather than wastefully producing new ones without regard to their usefulness. Imagine if, instead of protecting the privileges of the tiny minority of jobs creators (who, let’s face it, haven’t served that purpose very well lately anyway) we as a society collectively said, “Fuck the jobs creators. Let’s find a system that allows musicians, sculptors, painters, writers, parents of small children – all the people whose creations sustain us – to make a living creating things of value instead of commercial products.”
Then, all the jobs currently held by value creators could be recycled to employ the folks who actually want them.
Our society doesn’t seem quite ready to ask the question, “What about the arts creators?” and we’re not very good at choosing collective responses to social issues. Until the day when proper funding of the arts becomes an election issue, I’m glad to see Macklemore proving it’s possible to DIY without the jobs creators.