Published September 24, 2009

Greetings, nation,
It is with great pleasure that I address you all today (all y’all tourists, travelers and others our fine system does not recognize as being Icelandic, I greet y’all too).

Finally, the good guys have regained their strengths and are slowly taking the reigns again, nearly a year after this once great nation was all but destroyed by irresponsible banksters, irresponsible EEA regulation makers, irresponsible consumers (I’m looking your way, flatscreen television owners), irresponsible future governments and irresponsible people that disagree with my politics and/or personal preferences.

Yes, I, Davíð Oddsson, am now steering this vessel of information, and as you may remember, I was the only single person on Earth that warned against the then-imminent ECONOMIC COLLAPSE (you wish you’d listened to me as I cried my warnings from the obscure, easily ignorable post of Central Bank manager now, don’t you?).

This was, of course, beautifully demonstrated by my most devoted of disciples, political science Professor Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson, in a recent issue of this up-until-now flawed publication). And it’s true. We did all the right things; we de-regulated, we privatised, we sold off banks to responsible parties (-slash-party affiliates), we created conditions for ultimate wealth and prosperity. Indeed, Iceland was on the fast track to Utopia, right up until I foolishly left others to steer the country back in 2004.
That was a mistake I do not plan on repeating.

So, as I’ve told you, we’re taking back the reigns of Icelandic society, all pumped up and ready to steer it back to glory after these dark years of doubt and fear. It’s like in that Leonard Cohen song, “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin,” except we’re actually trading ‘Manhattan’ out for ‘The Media’ and ‘Berlin’ for ‘Iceland’. But you get my drift.

We are able to do this with the help of some good friends that have somehow managed to retain some of their hard-earned BILLIONS OF Krónur through the current government’s reign of terror and taxation. They most graciously offered to buy out certain branches of the local media for our disposal, so that we could convey the good people of Iceland the message that THEY’VE GOT IT ALL WRONG and the people that are pretending to be cleaning up after us are actually imposing harsh taxes, mass unemployment and ludicrous interest rates on the nation for fun. And because they’re incompetent. And socialists.

Incompetent, fun-loving socialists, that’s what your current government amounts to. Are you happy, nation?

They’re not even trying, those guys. They just sit around all day, laughing it up, playing the blame-game. I for one, unlike those incompetents who really are to blame for everything, refuse to play the blame-game, fun game that it is.

When you think about it, how could I even be responsible for anything? It’s just not rational. According to recent scientific studies by the political science department of the University of Iceland, existence itself actually began in February of 2009 (some scientists actually claim it started in September of 2004), rendering anything that happened prior to those two respective dates absolutely irrelevant, as it didn’t happen. How could our current problems stem from an imaginary time before time that didn’t even exist? (apologies to Tom Tomorrow).

Anyway. I’m back. Or here for the first time. Or whatever. What’s important is that I now run this show, and we’re going to see some changes around here, starting next issue.

“What will those changes entail?” you ask?

Well. I’m not sure. I’ve never edited a magazine before, and I just took over this one in time to write the editorial. So your guess is as good as mine, although I will promise you that I intend to devote a lot of space to my agenda of regaining power and, eventually, rebuilding this once fine nation. I’m also thinking of putting in more comix and human-interest stories, and expanding the poetry section.

I also dream of publishing more original fiction, although I hear that could cause a stir with the advertisers.