Quote of the Week...from Thom Yorke

Sonic the Hedgehog is a beautiful statement on capitalism. You spend your whole life collecting yellow rings and then hit one spike and lose them all.  And there is a fat man who wants to kill you.
                                                             ---Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke is the lead singer and one of the songwriters of the British alternative rock group Radiohead, and is widely known for his many deliberately shocking quotes.  He's obviously suffering some kind of disconnect about capitalism since he and his band have lived the capitalist dream, deservedly enriching themselves with their great music and providing employment to their supporting staff...yet he puts it down in the above statement.  I'm not sure exactly who the "capitalist" fat man is who is supposedly intent on killing you, but in Sega's popular Sonic the Hedgehog video games from the 1990s he is Dr. Robotnik.  I happen to know this because my son Will, then a little boy, was a big Sonic fan and although I myself didn't play much I enjoyed watching him survive from one scene to the next...and finally complete the games after getting past the evil doctor's traps.  When I did play Sonic, that was my strategy as well...not just to collect yellow rings but instead to focus on progressing through the game.  And maybe that's an important part of the capitalist system we live in: it accords people a choice as to what they will emphasize in life, as opposed to some alternative systems that dictate to its people what they must value...

That all having been said, Yorke is right when he talks about people saving the yellow rings and then suddenly losing them all due to a spike...in our country this usually happens due to medical issues that will eventually afflict virtually every family in some way.  Yes, here in America we have state-of-the-art treatment and that's good, but it's also expensive and some of the prescribed procedures and treatments of chronic illness and organ failure can quickly bankrupt, even with insurance.  Since in Britain they have a state-run system, the Radiohead front man may have been referring instead to how a sudden economic downturn can quickly wipe out people's investments.  And if you're running a company, maybe that "fat man" is the bigger corporation about to swallow you up or undersell you out of business...