Friday Find-Day!

 Well, well, well, Breakfast-eaters. Another week has passed and here you are: back at the Breakfast table, for a healthy heap of Friday Find-day digestibles.

This week, I've been caught in a routine of listening to Blond Redhead on my half-hour commutes to work; working my way, in ten-fifteen minute installments before bed, through a second viewing of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me; and savoring every last bit of literary bumpkin-ness in Eudora Welty's Losing Battles.

Again, because I am still sick, I haven't had much time for active Internet surfing (baby-steps, right?). I did, however, find some interesting links to things-political.

The first is this, which I found this morning:

http://www.28ers.org/28ersamendment


It's a link to a group called "the 28ers" who are rallying to "git the money outta politics." On either side of the U.S. political spectrum, I think this is an issue most politically-minded people would be interested in doing something about--unless, of course, you're a politician yourself and are currently in bed with and giving down-to-the-shaft blow-jobs to big-business.

May be a lost cause, but it's worth trying, right?

The second thing is this set of articles from the Economist, which speaks to the success of the Nordic economic/political model. I'm sure Jim, being the Conrad-ian world-traveler that he is, might have something to offer on this.

Speaking personally, as someone becoming more and more disenfranchised with U.S. politics--and someone who's always been interested in the Scandinavian social democracy model--this article does a good job of highlighting the difference between what the U.S. is doing and what the Nords are doing...right. If we ever do introduce a new political party, I hope that it's modeled after--or in some way, a synthesis--of the many different parties in the ABBA countries.

Speaking of which, isn't it funny how a country (the U.S.) with a bigger population and more diversity is represented by two parties while much smaller countries like Sweden, who's culture has been described as "homogenous," has a goddam Chinese take-out menu of different parties to choose from?

Anyway, until next time, when I hopefully have more exciting links to go to, something something something blah blah blah!