Today is Good Friday, and in Germany and Iceland it means that by law one is not allowed to dance, gamble or make jokes. I'm nothing but not a rebel, so here is my very inside joke for today:

The office of Efling union is restructuring. To safe costs all employees are fired and replaced by Andri Sigurðsson and his never to be finished web site.

I'm probably thinking of the word because I made lentils the other day. A Erbsenzähler (pea counter) is an overly pedantic person. It is a subspecies of the Spießer. In the good old days it was also used for a stingy person, but these days it refers to people who end up working for government institutions, so that they can deny your applications because of the smallest technicalities.

The picture is from my my trip to Belgium last year. My sister and her family, my father and his wife and me stayed for a week in the same summer house we used to go when I was a kid. It was a relaxing holiday and a nice trip down memory lane. It was so good to be out of Iceland and in the sun again, after being stuck for all of 2020. At least it was nice until global warming arrived at my childhood home, but that is a story for a future blog post.

Björt Framtið (bright future) was a political part founded in 2012. It was one of the may parties who appeared in the aftermath of the economic crash in 2008 and the realisation of corruption in Icelandic politics. As most of the parties after the crash their politics were based on promoting direct democracy (many of the party members had also been involved in the movement for a new constitution), some social programs and anti corruption measures.

Ten years later it is hard to describe the mood in 2012. There was a general optimism in the air, a hope that the old and corrupt system could be reformed into something new. In 2015 Björt Framtið had merged with Besti Flokkurinn, a protest party founded by comedian Jón Gnarr, a party that had famously come into power in Reykjavík. In 2017 they formed a coalition government with Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (one of the parties responsible for the economic crash in 2008) and Viðreisn, a liberal party with the idea to "change the system from the inside". The government fell apart in October of the same year, after yet another corruption scandal, which I wrote about during the time here. Björt Framtið never recovered. They received 1.2% in the election after the scandal and have been inactive since.

So why am I writing about them now? Well, they just were in the news, because their Twitter account had been hacked by some NFT promoting bot and is now just spouting NFT and blockchain promotion. And I just can't help but feel that the party called "Bright Future" founded with that much hope in 2012, embroiled in and destroyed by the corruption within the system they joined to change, ending up being hijacked for NFT promotion is just the perfect nut shelling of the last ten years. Oh what a bright future we got.

This took some time, but here is my very short playlist.

A side: 5 songs, which perfectly represent REM

1. Gardening at Night
2. Fall on Me
3. It's the End of the World
4. Losing my Religion
5. Man on the Moon

B side: My favourites

1. Feeling Gravity's Pull
2. You are the Everything
3. I've Been High

Concerts to watch
1985, Bochum, Germany They were so young! It was recorded by the local TV/Radio station and I would stay up late to watch it when it came on.
Unplugged, 1991 Needs no explanation

Other things
Song exploder: Losing my religion. Mainly because they managed to get Bill Berry on board and he is delightful.

Best discoveries I made while writing this blog
The Christmas singles. I loved listening to them again over Christmas. They are so much fun and worth this whole project alone.

When my friend from the previous post and I were putting together music for our Iceland road trip she was insistent to have Shiny Happy People with us, because it is her favourite REM song. This is why we are friends, we get the necessity for silliness.

I wish they had used accordion and dulcimer om more songs.


--- THE END ---