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Thursday, April 15, 2010

Iceland: When you’re covered in lava, it might be time to rethink your name

The world’s largest air traffic hub, Heathrow, grinds to a halt as the UK and surrounding areas are engulfed in plumes of ashes from an Icelandic eruption. It’s quite a story, and shows how Mother Nature can get in between you and your discount European dreams (so respect her, dammit!). But what the press is missing is root cause analysis. While the impact on us flying fat cats is some good infotainment of it’s own, I implore you to consider what might have contributed to this situation. I’ve run the numbers, and can confirm it’s due to a number of factors.

Factor 1: Plate Tectonics
They’re plates. Bigger than dinner plates. They have liquid hot stuff underneath them. They move around. That molten stuff gets restless and squeaks out like a giant pimple out of the earth’s crust. God (obviously) comes down and squeezes the white (in this case, red and smokey) pimple head, and then the pimple heals. But it doesn’t really go away. It’s one of those problem pimples, the ones that keep coming back. Leaves a scar when you’re older. Then you see a dermatologist, and all they want to do is give you drugs. But you don’t take them, and you have a scar that reminds you of the days when you had a lot of pimples, but not so much anymore, because you’re older, and suddenly getting older isn’t so bad. That’s exactly how it works. Class dismissed.

Factor 2: Bjork
She’s Icelandic. Her music is really fucking loud (and sometimes really, really soft at certain parts), and then IT’S REALLY LOUD AGAIN! That’s annoying. I erupt in anger when I hear it. So would a volcano. Angry volcanoes are Bjork’s fault.

Factor 3: Subprime Mortgages
Some dudes run Iceland’s finances. Since the ice business was pretty much torn out of them by those fridges with the icemaker on the outside, they were lost for income. Their people (who are also made of ice), who were previously busy constantly exporting Icelandic ice, were just sitting around chewing on seal blubber. What do you do, government and private sector finance dudes? Well, you obviously take part in massive financial market securities transactions based on US mortgages packaged many times over. Where’s the US Icelandic guy? Who cares – these are fucking triple-A securities, you should stop wasting time talking and get back to buying – spend every Krona you got. Fuck it, I’ll take seals. Seal pelts. Whatever. Bjork CDs. Oh oh - dammit – the whole thing fell apart and your Bjork-based economy is actually worth even less than before. Ok, not a problem, your European neighbours, who consider you the Newfoundland of Europe, will totally ignore you. So what do you do in retaliation? Get that volcano going! If you can’t kill them, at least make their lives horrific – or have them cancel a few flights.

Happy Bjirthday!