The Untrustworthy Reptile offers a way out of the recession

For first time visitors to this blog, it is our practice to devote weekday posts to fairly serious human issues. From time to time, however, we open this space to include commentaries by animals in and around Goat Rope Farm.

We are not entirely pleased to run this commentary by an occasional visitor who declines to give his proper name and is referred to around these parts as the Untrustworthy Reptile.

His appearance on this blog does not imply an endorsement of anything he may say and we further must deny any liability for consequences, medical or otherwise, that may follow from taking the advice he offers. Indeed, we only allow this commentary to be published because of our reverence for the First Amendment, although the extent to which it applies to reptiles is unclear.

Without further ado, we present

THE UNTRUSTWORTHY REPTILE'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN

Hey you! Yeah, the funny looking one. C'mere. I got something for you.

You know how the economy is in the toilet? All those jobs lost. All those banks going under. All those foreclosures. All that debt. Well, you know what? There's an easy way out.

That's right. I just happen to have in my possession my own economic recovery plan that would put everybody back on Easy Street in no time. And it's painless and so simple nobody could possibly be against it. Everybody would wind up smelling like a rose.

Wanna see it? I've got it right here. It's in my mouth. Way back there.

Just put your hand right in. C'mon, reach for it. Just put it part way in for a second...

Hey, wait! Where are you going? Come back here! I hate you! I hope you starve!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Do moon coyotes howl at the earth?

Earthrise from the moon, courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has a feeling that lots of people will be slacking off today as the Christmas holiday approaches. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The holiday season seems a little different this year. I don't know about you, but the annual ritual of excessive consumption that has grown around the holiday, always pretty crass, seems particularly off key given the growing economic crisis that is affecting so many people around the world. I keep wondering how bad it's going to get.

In the meantime, here are a few items, starting with one about the above image...

AN IMAGE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD (see above) is discussed in this article from the UK Guardian. Short version: the trip to the moon helped people discover the earth.

KICKING THE ECONOMIC BUBBLE HABIT will be tough.

A LENGTHY OBITUARY FOR "THE OWNERSHIP SOCIETY" and how Bush policies contributed to the current crisis can be found here.

GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE. The latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from under the Fig Tree ponders Dickensian themes in these hard times from A Christmas Carol.

SPEAKING OF HARD TIMES (AGAIN), labor and community groups in WV called for a meaningful stimulus package to get the economy moving again. Here's the coverage from the Charleston Gazette.

SURF'S UP! Waves in the Pacific Northwest have been increasing in height by 7 centimeters a year and no one is sure why.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A hell of a trip

William Blake's rendition of Ulysses and Diomedes in hell.

Goat Rope is winding up on long series on the Odyssey of Homer. You'll also find links and comments about current events. At this point, we've covered the epic pretty well and are now looking at what other writers have done with the character of Odysseus, aka Ulysses.

As noted in yesterday's post, Plato imagined that he would choose a calm, non eventful life next time around. But other writers, such as Dante, just weren't buying it. They imagined that Ulysses wouldn't be able to give up the itch for more travel and more adventures.

In Dante's Inferno, he wound up (or down) in the Eighth Circle of hell, a place reserved for fraud for the whole Trojan horse thing. Dante, after all, was a fan of Rome and the mythical founder of that city was the Trojan prince Aeneas. But it sounds like the real reason for his punishment was an endless thirst for adventure which leads him to set out again.

From the horse's mouth:

"When I

From Circe had departed, who concealed me
More than a year there near unto Gaeta,
Or ever yet Aeneas named it so,

Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
For my old father, nor the due affection
Which joyous should have made Penelope,

Could overcome within me the desire
I had to be experienced of the world,
And of the vice and virtue of mankind;

But I put forth on the high open sea
With one sole ship, and that small company
By which I never had deserted been..."

(Dante, of course, never read Homer. In the medieval period, knowledge of Greek was mostly lost in the west and he didn't know the whole story--like the fact that Odysseus returned alone from his wanderings.)

In Dante's version, Ulysses/Odysseus made the blasphemous decision to push beyond the boundaries of the known world and sail out into the ocean where his ship met disaster:

I and my company were old and slow
When at that narrow passage we arrived
Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals,

That man no farther onward should adventure.
On the right hand behind me left I Seville,
And on the other already had left Ceuta.

'O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand
Perils,' I said, 'have come unto the West,
To this so inconsiderable vigil

Which is remaining of your senses still
Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,
Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'

So eager did I render my companions,
With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,
That then I hardly could have held them back.

And having turned our stern unto the morning,
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
Evermore gaining on the larboard side.

Already all the stars of the other pole
The night beheld, and ours so very low
It did not rise above the ocean floor.

Five times rekindled and as many quenched
Had been the splendour underneath the moon,
Since we had entered into the deep pass,

When there appeared to us a mountain, dim
From distance, and it seemed to me so high
As I had never any one beheld.

Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;
For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,
And smote upon the fore part of the ship.

Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,
At the fourth time it made the stern uplift,
And the prow downward go, as pleased Another,

Until the sea above us closed again."

As we'll see tomorrow, Tennyson picked up on this theme as well.

UNGOOD NEWS. The economic meltdown has wiped out $2 trillion in retirement savings.

LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. Some economists see the financial meltdown as a chance to promote a more sustainable economy that looks beyond short term profits.

WHEN FACTS DON'T MATTER. Here's more on a recent study of the lasting effects of misinformation.

I KNOW YOU'RE ASKING YOURSELF THIS QUESTION, to wit: what do fish that live five miles below the surface of the ocean do and what do they look like? Your answer awaits here.

THIS IS TOTALLY WEIRD, but El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia is actually leading the nation in economic growth.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: INCOMPREHENSIBLE