Another long weekend, more mangled cars. Surely there is some correlation between national holidays and fatal accidents? Dr Clive Thomas needs to crunch the numbers and prove that going up the highway on long weekends is utterly reckless. Meanwhile once again we were disappointed in the Unmentionable Rag for not showing us some eviscerated bodies.
Come on you pussies! The people want to see blood: Everybody chant!
“We want blood! We want blood! We want blood! WE WANT BLOOD…(is that enough? Ok, just one more) we want blood (sotto voce) we want blood…
It’s better to stay home and bore yourself to death. A much gentler way to go. And what a boring couple of weeks in Guyana it has been. Nothing but stories we naively thought would be easily resolved but dribble along tediously until we can’t freakin’ read the newspapers any more…. There’s a pattern: The typical story begins with an explosive revelation, the scramble by the government, surprise/denials by a minister, a promise of a full investigation, the PNC weighs in, and the issue, now a punctured political football is soon kicked into the verge…
Take the Polar Beer Soda Pop Scam: Remember how we were all so gleeful, even joyous because someone big who had made a ton of money ($142M in duty?!) was finally gong to be held accountable…
Jagdeo ordered an inquiry….some officers were sent on leave, well you know the rest, just see the dolphin scam. (The truth is that despite millions spent on new computer systems for customs, some officers last week literally pulled out the plugs so they could pass some entries.)
So it was with the Lindo Creek massacre. “WHO DID IT?” screamed the SN headlines in font so big it took a minute to read each letter. And then…
Nothing…Instead we get a report the killers used hammers…then one story indicating no new development followed by half a page on what happened three weeks ago as if we are aliens who had just landed. (It is not necessary to name every person killed at Lindo Creek every time, ok?) And we still don’t know who did it.
The magistrate shooting the policeman was so, so juicy for all of a few minutes but now it has faded into a health update on the cop. “He has been moved from the ICU …he is eating solid foods…his mother visited him…” The people want to know what he saw in the car parked on some lonesome street late at night.
And while this is all going on we are actually being driven slowly insane by the Carifesta song. It’s genuine insanity, you know. On a scale of one to ten in infuriating banality this song must rank 1gazillion and one.
Firstly there are zero lyrics…actually there are about nine words: Our life…our culture…our people…with one purpose… and then the frickin Careeeeeee….Careeeee…. begins….Oh no! Stop it! STOP IT!….turn off the radio …too late! it’s stuck deep in our brain playing over and over…Careee… Careee…quick bring us an ice pick we’re going to stab that freakin’ song out of our head!
The US military could use that song in Guantanamo to extract confessions:
Detainee (deploy Arabic voice) : “Even though you have deprived me of sleep, waterboarded me, paraded me naked with women’s panties on my head ….For the hundredth time, I know nothing…I will say nothing…”
Music: “Careee! Careee…!”
Detainee: “Agggh….Aaagh! Yes! yes! I confess! My friend Akbar and I bought the explosives in a market in Kabul…please, please… stop that music…don’t you have any compassion?”
Then there is a follow up advertisement, now playing on the radio, which warns in doomsday voices … “the Caribbean is coming…the world is watching…all must get involved…”
“All must get involved” Exactly what does this mean…are we supposed to help make costumes? Clean up the garbage on the seawall so that some inconsiderate &*@holes can go dirty it again? How? How are we to get involved? Learn to walk on stilts? Lower the bar on our limbo limbo? Weave straw hats? Walk around with a condom on. (That was one HIV message…”Wear a condom at all times”…it was such a nuisance)
Tell us…we are so worried Carifesta is coming! Aggghh! We can’t stand idly by and let Carifesta come! AND WORSE STILL WHILE THE WORLD WATCHES! ALL MUST GET INVOLVED!
But the more we think of Carifesta the more it feels like the equivalent of China’s Olympics Games.
No one gives a damn about it apart from those performing. The rest of the Caribbean did not want to host it so why on earth did Guyana take it? Is this country so desperate for recognition? For tourists?
The fact is that Jagdeo volunteered like some nerdy schoolboy…”Yes Miss Carrie Comb! I’ll clean the blackboard!”
His reasons? Firstly as a communist indoctrinated economist he knows that large state-run projects generate economic activity among the tolerated private sector in what is a moribund economy sucked completely dry by VAT.
Secondly he wants to show that while Burnham held the first Carifesta, he and the PPP can do it better as part of a 40-year-old pissing contest.
Thirdly it’s about the Politics of Distraction, You know the one the Roman emperors used to employ when bread prices went sky high and the plebs were on the verge of revolt. Open the coliseum and let’s kill some slaves.
And fourthly he wants to brain wash the people with the evil Carifesta song which if you play it backwards actually says, “Jagdeo must be granted a third term…destroy his enemies.”
