Friday, July 21, 2006

This will all end. Just not yet.

This description of the completely over the top Moscow nightclub scene reads so totally like descriptions of the Tokyo bubble circa 1988. That ended gradually after the stockmarket and real estate bubbles collapsed. However, Japan's political system was and is something resembling a democracy, and the Japanese economy was real, and modern, and actually made stuff, or at least some portions of the Japanese economy did, whereas Russia is becoming darkly repressive and the "economy" is just high energy prices and nothing else. An economic or political shock could be nasty, one fears.

Somehow, though, one expects Zaphod Beeblebrox to show up at any moment. The unending party on Stalin's boat sounds almost like something that Douglas Adams made up. Adams' work is even funnier now than it was in 1979. He had the ability to parody the future, somehow. Just the other day, an ATM did actually tell me that it was always glad to serve me. Really.

(Link via Arts & Letters Daily).

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