I’m not gonna lie to you – this fourth editorial of mine will be a bland, run-of the mill one.

See, my brain stopped working a few hours back – I’ve been up for the longest time translating political banter and cliché terminologies for THE GRAPEVINE’S ALL-ENCOMPASSING GUIDE TO THE 2009 ICELANDIC PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. We thought we’d service our local, English-speaking readership by providing all the information they need to make an informed decision of whom to vote for in the upcoming elections.

It was quite the task. We rang up all the political parties (there’s like… eight of them running now) and asked ‘em to send us a brief description of their agendas and ideologies, as well as answering ten select questions we posed. The idea was to give the parties an opportunity to present themselves exactly the way they wished while answering some key questions; to give them an open platform to speak to their voters and others interested in Icelandic politics.

When they finally turned in the requested materials, we needed to translate it all into English; a very lengthy endeavour that revealed to me for once and all just how much of what our politicians utter is comprised of utterly meaningless drivel that they seem to spew by pure force of habit.

You know what I’m talking about, right? They’ve got all these crazy words and phrases they use all the time that don’t really mean anything at all. If you stick your head in them long enough, for instance while translating them, your mind will eventually melt into a soft mush – sorta like mine did a few hours back. Where was I?

So, we created this awesome guide to the upcoming elections, spent a lot of time working on it and stressing about it, making sure everyone was fairly and accurately represented. It looked good, too. And then, due to some unforeseen complications we… ehrm… couldn’t fit it anywhere. There was just no room. Not enough pages. Fuck.

Enter THE INTERNET and its magical powers and endless supply of blank electro-pages. We decided to make a special section on our web site, www.grapevine.is, dedicated to the elections, where all the material we’ve accumulated and strived over may be found in its entirety. So go there and read it now, please. We know you carry your laptop everywhere, and you do need to actively participate in the democratic process. So go there. Read stuff, enlighten yourself, learn what our future rulers have to say for themselves. Please. We worked real hard.

Anyway. I assume you’ve been on the Internet now and read the entire election section. Good work! You must now immediately turn your attention to Haukur Már Helgason’s stunning article on the current re-colonization of the Icelandic nation, and what that process entails. Pay close attention: it has some very chilling information that you need to know, and it also happens to feature some of the best writing we’ve ever run, in my humble opinion.

BTW: Jamming is brilliant!