RustyGate

Like John McCain said, the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’m not the sharpest button on the calculator, and if I had an accountant I’m sure they’d have killed themselves by now.

However, I do like to think I have a grasp on the basics. Like, where the current “global financial crisis” is concerned. This, of course, is in no way the latest media-fuelled overblown crisis-of-the-month, although if you followed all the recent hype about food shortages or the credit crunch* or an increase in hurricanes, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought the broadcast networks were just trying to keep the masses occupied.

I digress. So the financial markets are in turmoil because some big bankers and mortgage lenders have been playing fast and loose for years, and now their walls are crumbling round their ears. Okay. And now they’re being offered what are essentially blank cheques to save their asses - with taxpayers’ money.

Am I getting this right? Cos if you watch the English and American news, you’d think these guys are basically about to be saved by the same people whose futures they’ve essentially hijacked. Does that make sense?

Well, call me a commie or a hysterical shrieking populist idiot, but the idea of underwriting some filthy-rich CEO’s fallout from his Bad Mistake seems rather stupid to me. I mean, they were born of, and sustained by The Markets, right?

So let The Markets handle them in their failure. Isn’t that the idea of a Free Market Economy?

That you’re free to Win or, in this case, free to (Epic) Fail?

* Like WTF us a “credit crunch” anyway - and can I eat it?

It’s a classic age-old tale of love, lust and laughter, replayed over and over through the ages since time immemorial.

The man, the wife and the mistress, flung together via a confluence of forces variously known as Fate, Luck or Consequence.

It usually begins with the man apart from his wife, alone, and seeking out the comfort of another woman. All is fine at first; the mistress knows her situation and plays the blushing Ingenue to the cheating husband’s Cad.

She provides for him, she cares for him, she fucks his brains out, even plays marriage counsellor as required. For a while they are blissful in their sin, and the sun shines brighter than ever before.

She eventually decides to improve her standing in the relationship, and invariably confesses her undying love to the man of her dreams. He says he “cares for her”, and they carry on, but the tension rises as the mistress becomes increasingly demanding.

She demands he leave his wife, and promises they would be happy together forever. The clingier she becomes the more he withdraws, and eventually he pushes her away.

Stung by his callous indifference, she confronts him and asks the tough questions, and he plays it coy. They walk away from each other, seperate in their grief, both indignant and relieved, gutted and unflinching.

He returns to his wife, the love of his life, and settles back into the warm comforting routine of familiarity, forever yearning for the excitement of the mistress, bored in his happiness whilst being the perfect man.

She moves on, life’s lessons happily filed, searching for laughter, for someone who will say I Love You back, someone to fill the void left by what she thought was the answer to all her dreams.

This is the story of the small house. The characters may vary between male and female, bitch and bastard, wife and husband. But the result is always the same.

Heartbreak.

So, today’s the day huh? We’ve finally come to it - time for the Three Stooges to give us the details of their little ‘agreement’.

Seems like they’ll be signing this thing in front of half of SADC, who I bet aren’t just here for the sunshine, but to gorge at the heaving table of Zimbabwe taxpayers’ “precious foreign currency”.

Imagine all the wine, all the steaks - indeed, Harare’s chickens must be royally shitting themselves today. Cos if there’s one thing we know, it’s that we Africans like to party, and the diplomatic corps aren’t shy of the buffet table either.

So it’s finally happened, our ‘opposition’ will be there hanging out, sipping the good shit with their historical foes, all this new-found love and arse-grabbing witnessed and indeed *blessed* by Southern Africa’s elite and the usual shady, skulking agents of Western diplomacy (read: regime change).

Welcome to the new dispensation. Watch out for flying cork.

Interesting to hear that Kim Jong-il, the Dear Leader of North Korea may not be in the best of health.

Son of legendary moron Kim Il-sung, Lil’ Kim was always one of my favourite pet dictators, those laughable caricatures of idiot-despot propagated by Western media and popular culture.

Indeed, his star turn in the 2004 film Team America: World Police as a lonely (pronounced: ron’ry) madman obsessed with “Arec” Baldwin firmly made him an icon in my eyes, even more mock-worthy than Gadaffi or whomever else Hollywood was dissing at the time.

Now he’s apparently nearing his life’s end. Well, dynasties aren’t forever, and dictatorships always fail.

Nevertheless, “… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Oh, who am I kidding? Die, motherfucker. Die.

The good stuff - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

•  Kim imported 200 brand new Mercedes-Benz S500s, adding to North Korea’s fleet of 7,000 Mercedes cars. 
• Defectors claim that Kim has 17 different palaces and residences. 
•  In 1978, on Kim’s orders, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee were kidnapped in order to build a North Korean film industry. 
•  Kim commands the fifth largest standing army in the world .
•  North Koreans have been referred to as “some of the world’s most brutalized people”.