Vlada-njv2

This picture portrays Uncle Sam commenting on recent Middle East riots,while being tied by petrol hose. Petrol hose has a remark of its own,implying that it a very fortunate circumstance.Or is it?
It is a well-known fact that USA's,in this particular picture Uncle Sam's, economy greatly depends on the black gold. Unfortunately for Uncle Sam, his country started exploiting this resource long ago, which means that there is not enough precious oil to satisfy the needs of the United States. As the basic rules of economy say,if you have insufficient amounts of something,you have to import it. That is the root of Uncle Sam's big problem. When you import something from someone,you have to bargain with that specific person. That can be really frustrating, and exhausting. Sometimes, it is easier to eliminate your stubborn trader, and replace him with someone more friendly, and less stubborn, of course. As the old saying goes :"With great power comes great responsibility." It is  logical to presume that your friend, as he gets more and more powerful, will get more greedy,up to the point when he becomes the same as his predecessor.There's only one thing to be done then.
I can imagine Uncle Sam,the world's number one bully,shaking his head in disbelief while saying: "Yes, someone got the rebels armed,and yes,this events are very fortunate for us,but, you wouldn't suggest that we had something to do with it?" No of course not, dictators from Middle East reigned for more than two decades,but suddenly people found them unworthy. Uncle Sam had nothing to do with it. His hands are tied...Literally.
Sadly, we live in a time labelled as the golden era of oil consumption. Oil reserves are running low. In twenty years,more or less, they will be depleted. Event happening today are nothing more than logical course of events in a given situation. We need oil ergo we will take it, using all means necessary.Hopefully we will all survive this oil-mania. After that,who knows, maybe we'll start using solar energy or some other pollution-free source of energy. But I doubt it, since there is no way to charge it properly.    




    

I find it amusing, and somewhat disturbing, that our society seems to import all the most profitable ideas, and most of the time all the worst as well, from the Western countries first, while those more needed, but less profitable come a decade or so later, if ever. The same thing is with ads. Since our great revolution and opening towards democracy, ads, commercials, and everything around them has evolved beyond our imagination. Back in the days when I was a child, products were rarely advertised. And why would they be? You had one or two brands of everything, and statistically half the nation would be one brand and the other half the other. I remember, even though I was very young at the time, that there were no commercials during the movie on the television. Only before and after. My grandfather had an aftershave with boring and rather ugly label - yellow background with red name imprinted on it.

The first book I stumbled upon was the collection of Serbian epic poems. I was only five or six years old, and my father had to read it for me. I remember how fascinated I was, and although I could not understand it completely, due to wast number of archaic and, at the time unknown words, I was eager to hear more and more.  For a couple of weeks my father was "forced" to read to me poem after poem. I believe now that that particular book opened a whole new world for me,a world of endless imagination where everything is possible. I was so overwhelmed by it, that I started creating my own noble quests, when I was playing with my toys, or my friends. Every day was filled with another task to slay a dragon, or mighty foe, thus bringing the peace to the world. Nevertheless, part of the blame for my behavior was on my father, because he used to jump around the room while reading, imitating parts of the poems, changing tone of his voice while reading dialogues, giving me a complete performance for every song he had read.
It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I must say, that after this first contact with the world of literacy I stayed away from books for the next couple of years. I was to busy being a child, and playing outside or simply watching cartoons was my idea of a good time. I ignorantly believed books were for grown ups, not for me. I even refused to read the ones I had to, for school. That was until the end of the third grade, if I remember correctly. I do not know what happened to me on that sunny summer day, but against all odds, instead of going outside to play, I went to the library. After a few minutes of wandering around, a librarian asked me if I wanted to rent a book. And so I did. The librarian had to recommend it to me, and she chose Karl May's "Winetou" for some unknown reason. All that I'm going to say is that it took me three days to read it. Then I got back to library and rented another one and another one, until I read all the books Karl May's had wrote. Or at least all his books our library had. I spent endless hours lost in the pages, between prairies of North America,to chilling winters of Siberia, following Old Shatterhand and his friends in their for the peace and justice. After that, I knew for no boundaries. Space explorations, Medieval wars, adventures of numerous heroes, whatever the topic was I was interested and eager to read it. It could be that I found refuge in these parallel universes, but nonetheless, I had so much fun. More important, I could not stop. Once the door was open and I reentered this amazing world, there was no going back, and I knew that books were going to be my companion for as long as I'm alive.
During my high school years, I was introduced to a new form of literature, more serious, even though I believe  every work of art is serious enough, and has a value of some sort. Again, I stumbled upon a little red book, without pompous cover, called "Black Obelisk". It was a book about young German artist, and his day to day struggle to live a normal life in a country that had lost the war, where the inflation was so high newly printed money became worthless within hours. I found this book interesting because it described the situation similar to the one in our country during the 90's. Even more, I realized that a book doesn't have to be about heroes and their epic fights to be interesting. Even a description of a twenty year old war veteran's life can be breathtaking.
Few year ago, a newspaper began to sell books once a week, all-time classics, and their phrase was "Books are in again". I was shocked when I saw that commercial. For me, books were never out. Sadly, majority of people won't agree with me. Otherwise we, as a nation, would not be where we are today.