Tune In, You Guys

The President of the United States wants to defund public television.

Yes, the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS.

Non-American readers: If you want to understand the impact of this proposed defunding, please learn about PBS here. Actually, it's a good read for Americans, too, who might otherwise take the existence and ubiquity of public television for granted.

In a nutshell, if you live in the USA and have enjoyed any of these, it's because of PBS:

Muppets
Mister Rogers
Julia Child
The Electric Company
Bob Vila
Bob Ross (BOB F'ING ROSS, PEOPLE)
Monty Python
Fawlty Towers
Carl Sagan
Are You Being Served?
The PBS Newshour fka the McNeil/Lehrer Report
Sneak Previews with Siskel and Ebert
Austin City Limits (!!!)
Doctor Who
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Dragon Tales
Downton Abbey
Cosmos (COOOOOSSSSMMMOOOOSSSS)

But screw all that, because our current President wants to save approximately 0.05% of the total budget by slashing funding to PBS.

And we could totally appropriate that money for a gold-plated buttplug engraved with his initials, yo.

I DO NOT ENDORSE THIS AWESOME IMAGE, OK?

I'm so disheartened that this move is not motivated by a need to save money, but clearly by a need to destroy institutions that might with impunity question the right of our current Commander in Chief to do whatever the hell he wants at the expense of small, ineffective  players like, oh, the American People.

It's almost as if Trump promised - and is now fulfilling that promise - to be the President of the money-grubbing assholes who don't care about anything but their own wealth fuck yeah.

Because why else kill the network of Masterpiece Fucking Theater?

Yeah, I thought so.

My eyes are on 2018, Drunkards, when we can at least begin to take back America from the would-be fascist Scrooges of this country.

#Resist

Kill Masterpiece fucking Theater, my ass.

God Bless America.

My Phone May Be Too Good for Me

This is probably going to excite most of you far (FAR) less than it excites me. But today I GOT A SMARTPHONE.

Oh my God oh my God oh my God.

Sorry, but it really is like that.

I've never had a smartphone. The phone I had was mildly retarded. It made calls and texted. It had a crappy little camera. It actually went online using, I believe, a 28.8 baud dial-up modem. Seriously.

I had no apps. I had no touch screen. What I had was a big red phone that weighed about a pound and lately had developed cell-phone Alzheimer's. It had taken to randomly turning itself off, refusing to receive texts, and only achieiving an Internet connection when it damn well felt like it.

It was the Grumpy Cat of phones, without being
remotely adorable about it.

But for all my phone's flaws, Precocious Daughter's phone was worse. We got her a basic cell phone two years ago so we could stay in touch when she was with friends or doing school activities. And for a while, that worked out OK. Until her phone - which apparently shared DNA with mine - up and decided it would no longer stay charged unless it was physically plugged into the wall.

Stay with me here: a cell - or mobile - phone that can't leave the house is to a certain extent defeating the purpose of the technology.

This would have been a distinct improvement.
Portable, and the child would have been humiliated.
Score.

Finally, our three-person family had four cell phones. Each of us had a phone, plus we had a "house" phone that mostly sat around lonely and then got sulky and dropped calls when we actually wanted to use it. Yeah, we basically had the sorriest, most dysfunctional collection of cell phones in America. Or maybe we all get the phones we deserve.

And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, right.

So Beloved Spouse had been bugging me for some time to right all that was wrong with our cell phones. Today was the day. PDaughter and I were at the mall, and we walked past the T-Mobile kiosk, and instead of averting my eyes and pretending I really, really had to get to Charlotte Russe immediately as I usually do to avoid messing with this stuff, I stopped, took a deep breath, and said, "I need to change my plan."

God, I hate dealing with my plan. What a pain in the butt. I'd rather put hot pokers in my eyes than deal with my plan. In fact, I'd rather pay for an assemblage of underperforming, overpriced phones than deal with my plan, as demonstrated by the fact that I'd been doing just that for months.

But then...a miracle happened.

And I don't mean the miracle of
the Jesus Banana.

An awesome young man named Amir started digging in to our options. And when the dust settled, PDaughter and I got smartphones. We got more minutes, unlimited data, and unlimited texts. T-Mobile told us to keep the house line for free and gave us a free upgrade to replace the cranky phone. They cut the price of our mobile hotspot in half. And the overall cost of our plan went down.

I have no idea what just happened.

Me.

I have a smartphone. It's a...oh hell, I don't even know. It's shiny.

Yeah, that's it. It's an Optimus Prime.
I think it turns into a car or something.

I'm positive my smartphone is in fact smarter than I am. I haven't a clue what to do with it. I'm a little afraid of it. And now I have to actually figure out what an "app" is instead of pretending I know.

But it's soooo cool. I can't believe it wants to be my friend. I'm going to start playing with it and seeing what it can do once I work up the nerve. I'm going to Facebook and download and Skype and share and all that good shit.

Hey...I wonder if this thing makes calls, too?

(Nearly) Rantless

I admit it: I was all geared up to deliver a rant today aimed at the Republicans and how we've given them four years to try to torpedo the President of the United States at the expense of the country they claim to love, and now would they please get down to work so the next four years aren't a massive waste of everybody's time?

But I'm just too damn worn out. The election is over at long last, and for the moment I'm simply out of bile. It will replenish itself, I'm sure. My bile is a totally renewable resource.

Just to be sure, I'll double up on my daily dose
of Bile Beans Laxative Plus.
That should keep me from waking liverish.

Instead, I'm just going to offer a few random facts and observations. Those are fun, right?

First of all, I was a little disappointed that I was the only person at my polling location who danced after voting yesterday. I even sang a little song that went "I got my vote on, I got my vote on." It was very cool, because there was a double line of people waiting for their turn, so it was a little like being in the dance line on "Soul Train." But nobody joined in.

Tsk. Voting is a joyous privilege, people. If participating in free elections isn't cause for breaking out in spontaneous awkward dancing, I don't know what is.

You've got four years to get some moves to bust.

Next: I got a job, bitches! Regular readers know that at the end of September I got laid off from my spectacular overpaid position doing nothing for a green technology company. It'll all be in the book. But starting Monday, I'll be doing actual work. Gulp. I don't know yet how the need to be productive will affect this blog. I have faith that I'll find a way to manage it. My ability to avoid work without being detected is honed to a razor's edge.

To be a tiny bit serious for a brief moment, I'm well aware that my six weeks of unemployment could just as easily have stretched into six months, as it has for so many people. I had the support and encouragement of an amazing network of friends and colleagues. They not only generously steered me toward opportunities but kept me from entering a state of wrist-slitting panic over what my brain insists on characterizing as the moral failure of losing my job. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for that support, and for the kind words that came from Drunkards I've never even met. It's not a word I toss around lightly, but I feel blessed to have all of you in my life.

I'm stoked about becoming this person again.

Last thing: I wanted to let you know the reason I bugged out on the live-blogging event on my Facebook page last night before the election returns were all in. Here it is: the combination of large amounts of vodka and leftover candy corn created an existential chemical reaction, resulting in the creation of an alternate personality who decided to stage a coup on the part of me who isn't Chuck Baudelaire - and totally won. Then she started sending out private messages that weren't remotely related to the election and eating all the Fun-Size Milky Ways. Poor Chuck had to go into hiding.

Yeah, it was weird. That chick definitely drinks too much.

Anyway, that's all from here. I'm going to take the unemployment money I haven't spent yet and go shopping. Gotta keep that economy stimulated. The Prez needs all the help he can get.

Blasts from the Future

This week I've been in touch with two former employers. One is contracting me to write pieces just like the ones I used to write when I worked there a decade ago. There's no job offer coming with this, but it's a solid credit for my portfolio and a bit of cash to pad the bank account, and oh my gosh it's fun to be doing it again.



Never, ever burn bridges.
Unless they have trolls under them.

The other former employer reportedly would hire me tomorrow, but to do a job completely different from what I used to do for her. And that is scary scary scary. Because I'm intimately familiar with the position being offered. I worked closely with that position for years as a support person. And all the while I supported the folks doing that work, I thanked Jeebus that I wasn't them.

And lo, Jeebus did have my back.

Without going into a lot of details, it's a stressful job. Great opportunities for growth, very interesting work. And Piranhaconda-like in its ability to devour people and leave bits of them bleeding and twitching on the ground.

It's mutant-reptile-fish-eat-scantily-clad-woman out there.

Also, it would involve travel. Now, I've done my share of traveling for business. But it's pretty much been corporate-style travel. You know, fly in the night before, check into a nice hotel, spend the next day or two doing what you came to do, which mostly involves schmoozing with people dressed in business-casual clothes, have a couple of really great meals at the company's expense, and then fly home and share pictures of all the cool local stuff you saw and did on your off time.

This job isn't like that.



Boy, did he have it easy.

For the purposes of this job, travel means getting on a plane at 6:00 a.m., driving straight to your job site, interacting with a combination of laborers and government workers (equally indifferent to your needs), making sure everything you need to do gets done because a return visit is NOT in the budget, rushing back to the airport to catch the 6:00 p.m. flight, then getting to the office first thing the next morning to explain why your project is a disaster but it's not your fault.

Former colleagues who read this blog: Am I leaving anything out? Seriously?

I am beyond flattered that I've impressed my former boss as someone who can do this job, especially since I have zero experience beyond the years I spent being the professional who supported the professionals who did it. I know the industry, I know several of the people I'd be working with (it's a very incestuous industry that way), and I know that I'd be introduced gradually into the parts of the job I haven't actually experienced firsthand.

But I've been on the verge of a low-grade panic attack ever since I got the phone call.

Just for reference, my idea of
a low-grade panic attack.

Now, because this job is a) outside my field of expertise and b) initially likely to pay less than 90% of my most recent salary, the State of Texas says I can decline it without jeopardizing my unemployment benefits. I would love to take the easy route and hold out for a job that exactly matches my qualifications, pays great, and doesn't make me break out in a cold sweat at the thought of it. I just don't know if I'm cutting off my nose to spite my unemployed-ass face.

I do have the benefit of a bit of time. Former Employer #1 has given me some writing assignments that will take several days to complete. Prior commitments for the win, right? And I don't think the offer from Former Employer #2 will dry up if I don't accept it immediately. I have the incredible luxury of choice at this moment. Note to the Presidential candidates: If there's anything that defines a thriving nation, it's choice.

And not just of the "which dividend check will I cash today?" variety.

So I have a lot to think about. Once again: I am totally grateful to the wonderful people who have offered these opportunities. I'm luckier than so many Americans who lack not only jobs but options. You know who you are, and thank you. You've made my future seem brighter than it would seem otherwise, regardless of where I end up.

On the other hand, I could take my next unemployment check and invest it in lottery tickets. Because if I won, I'd be freaking set.

I'm not taking a single option off the table.

Debatable Results

Last night I live-blogged the first Obama-Romney debate on my Facebook page. Thanks to everyone who joined in, and oh gosh am I pumped for the battle of the veeps on October 11. I can't wait to hear what Muscle Man and the High-Five Ghost have to say to each other.

When you have a 12-year-old, you make "Regular Show" references.

During last night's event, I think I actually kept things pretty non-partisan. Mostly because I was sort of turned off by both candidates. For goodness sakes, Jim Lehrer has been a respected journalist in this country for nearly 200 years; show the man some freaking respect. If I'd been moderator for the debate, and President Obama and Governor Romney tried to talk over me and each other the way they did, there would have been two live bare-ass spankings on national television.

Note to debate organizers: This might actually be a pretty good idea, ratings-wise. Also, you could sell licks to audience members for charity.



A la Airplane! Get a hold of yourself, everything's going to be all right.

In any event, both candidates talked and talked and talked. About taxes and health care and jobs and education and all of those things that are so critically important to America's future they cannot be discussed without wearing a moderately constipated expression on your face.

Fart first, damn you. Fart first.

And from what I could understand over all the shouting (seriously, I'm getting my belt right now, you two), both men promised to cut taxes, increase revenue, reduce the deficit, preserve Medicare, and create a race of billionaire robot super-patriots with their minds. Only Romney would do it while mowing down a death panel with a cheap, legal Uzi, while Obama would employ three million gay Americans to get it done. Or something.

This was a debate chock-full o' policy. You cannot accuse these men of sidestepping the issues. No pithy sound bites for these candidates; I think the shortest sentence the entire evening was when Gov. Romney announced, apropos of nothing, "I like coal." Other than the fifty or sixty times Jim Lehrer said "Uh...", of course.

But for all their loquacious verbal sparring, I heard very little in the way of specifics. Probably a good thing, or else we'd still be in the middle of opening statements right now. What we got was a series of very long, wordy mission statements that, like most mission statements, consisted of two parts PR and one part incomprehensible bullshit.

Or the terrorists win, amen.

Here's what I want the candidates to understand about America. And then come up with solutions. I don't have solutions; I'm a dirtbag blogger, not a scum-sucking politician. But if either Obama or Romney want to do a good job as President (which I assume is what they want, and that they're not just in it for the bedazzled flag lapel pins), I think they need to grok the problems better than they do.

So listen up.

1. There are 330 million people in this country, which is a few more than we started out with. Government that takes care of everything and government that leaves everybody alone are both terrible, unworkable ideas. Maybe when America consisted of twelve families and a bunch of cows. But not now. So stop pretending either philosophy is the only way to go.

2. Most people aren't gazillionaires. Most people pay the taxes they owe and chalk it up to the price of living in America. Most people don't understand why someone who makes $14 million a year even cares how much they pay. Instead they think, "If I made $14 million a year, even if I paid half my income in taxes, I would still have $7 million to tide me over until next year, awwwwwwyeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah." If you drone on about tax policy but don't get that taxes are only really, really important to the tiny fraction of Americans who have more than enough money, you can't govern this country.

3. The American population consists of well-informed, intelligent, thoughtful people, as well as ignorant, gullible, hateful people. No political party is composed of only one or the other. You have to be everybody's President, but the message of the lowest common denominator shouldn't define your administration.

4. Not one more negative word about your opponent or his party. Not about his record, not about his finances, not about his family or the jobs he held in the past. America is full of journalists who are dying to present the whole story. And they will, because people want to know. But no one likes a tattler. It's not your place to rat out the other guy.

5. Send Jim Lehrer some flowers and candy. Your manners really were abysmal.

He's totally unfriending you both.

Let's move on to the next debate. That's the one where we decide the whole thing with rock paper scissors lizard Spock, right?

The Worst Cut Is the Deepest

So, presumptive GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney has announced his intention to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, among other things, if he's elected.

Art is for rich people, who don't need funding.

Well, he says "when," not "if," but whatever.

Now, the NEA provides grants that support all kinds of artistic endeavors, from film production to writing workshops to community outreach programs, all designed to encourage and promote American creative works both at home and around the world. What the NEA does is not equivalent to law enforcement or job creation or technological development, and I'm not saying it is. But it's a perfect example of a government-funded program that benefits many, elevates our standing as a nation, and costs very little compared to what it accomplishes.

The NEA's annual budget is roughly $150 million. Presumptive Candidate Romney isn't talking about reducing that amount, maybe as part of across-the-board cuts to meaningfully affect the federal budget. He's talking about eliminating funding. As in, take it to zero while simultaneously cutting taxes. Because that $150 million will totally offset the $86 billion by which he plans to reduce federal tax revenues from wealthy Americans.

Want to hear a fun fact? In 2011, the Department of Defense lost $22 billion. I don't mean they had a couple of really unprofitable bake sales. I mean that, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, they spent $22 billion with no record of where it went or why. That's about 3% of the DOD's entire budget. This is not an outfit you want reconciling your checkbook.

A million dollars for camo thongs?
Sounds right to me.

In other words, the NEA could be funded at its current level until the year 2154 with the money our military misplaced in a single year. Your grandchildren's grandchilren's grandchildren could be applying for grants if the DOD would just look in its sofa cushions for the money it can't account for.

But Mitt's not talking about that money. He's also not talking about pulling funding for these actual in-the-budget projects that clearly are more worthy of preserving than the National Endowment for the Arts:

M1 Abrams tank upgrades. Despite my abhorrence of war, I'm not saying the United States shouldn't maintain a technologically up-to-date defensive force. I am saying that, even though the DOD in a rare burst of fiscal responsibility has recommended suspending tank production until 2017, the latest budget still earmarked $255 million for...tank production. The earmark, by the way, was sponsored by a Michigan congressman whose district benefits greatly from building tanks.

Global AIDS/HIV prevention. An extremely worthy and important activity, which is why the federal budget includes almost $8 billion devoted to research and treatment. So why did the DOD (them again) ask for and receive $8 million of its own for the same purpose? I mean, that would buy a lot more rubbers than we currently have servicemen. Just saying.

The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program. Basically, $38.5 million dollars for the war on drugs. Even the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy has admitted that the time and money this country has thrown at the problem of illegal drug use has accomplished diddly squat. Granted, this expenditure is chicken feed compared to the $1 trillion we've spent over 40 years to ensure that drugs remain dangerous, romantic, and extremely profitable.

Abstinence education programs. That would be $5,000,000 to deny horny teenagers access to useful information about sex.

The East-West Center. Located in Hawaii, this institution seeks to build cooperation among Pacific nations. The State Department, under whose purview the Center falls, finds its existence an unnecessary expense and routinely declines to request funding for it. So how did it get another $5.8 million in the latest budget? It could have something to do with the fact that Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) is the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

These and many other examples of dumb pork-barrel spending can be found in the Pig Book, compiled annually by Citizens Against Government Waste. It's a good read; you should check it out.

You too, Presumptive Candidate Romney. And then maybe you can explain why you don't mention the new $2 million dollar Secret Service office in Lima, Peru, or the $116 million designated to test Israel's military weapons, in the same breath as the NEA when you're talking about trimming the budget.

Or you can keep pretending that the only people who think art is important are Democrats. Are you even going to try to be President of the whole United States? Or just President of People Who Like Tanks?

My election budget consists of one vote. I need to decide how to spend it wisely. Know what I mean?

A Billion Dollars Well Spent. Except the "Well" Part.

Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign raised $106.1 million dollars in June. That's compared to "only" $71 million dollars raised for President Obama's re-election campaign. In May and June, the two presumptive nominees took in a combined $314 million in donations.

Sometimes only a meme will do.

Wait, let me repeat that, because it's just that interesting. In the last two months, the Romney and Obama campaigns have raised 314 million dollars.



The hell you say.

Now, there's going to be a lot more money raised and spent between now and November by these two thugs statesmen and their respective gangs parties - after all, the 2008 Presidential campaign cost more than...one billion dollars.

I admit it: I just wanted to run this picture. Dr. Evil is awesome.

A billion dollars to convince us which candidate is the most fiscally responsible and/or least likely to do stupid crap with our money? Really? Do the candidates think the American electorate is a bunch of idiots who will believe whatever message we see flashed in front of us?

OK, so I was totally taken in by that one.

And we know damn well that most of the money will be spent not on touting how great Candidate A is, but on what a godless asshat Candidate A wants you to think Candidate B is. Meanwhile, Candidate B's funds will be spent on convincing you that Candidate A is basically a big turd in a necktie who wants to murder your children. A billion dollars later, we'll be asked to vote for the least patently offensive person to drive our great nation to ruin for the next four years.

We call this expensive slap-fight "democracy."

For absolutely no good reason, let's list 10 random things that could be bought with a billion dollars, other than sleazy TV commercials and ugly bumper stickers.

For $1 Billion, You Could...

...pay for almost 59,000 students to attend a state university (including in-state tuition, fees, room and board) for a year.

...cover annual child-care expenses for the parents of more than 130,000 infants in Texas.

...buy a year's worth of groceries for almost 84,000 families.

...give a 64GB Apple iPad to 1.4 million status-obsessed hipsters. (That's approximately 5% of the world's hipster population, according to a statistic I just now made up.)

...buy a year's worth of gas (at $3.50/gal) for every licensed driver in Wyoming.

...send every child in America to the movies and let them buy an overpriced box of Junior Mints from the concession stand to boot.

...satisfy the annual health-insurance deductible for 258,000 families.

...put 21,700 tree-huggers behind the wheel of a fully loaded 2012 Chevy Volt (including TT&L).

...buy an ounce of gold for every person in Boston, Massachusetts (as long as they promised to invest it wisely and not blow it on Patriots tickets).

...give every single person in America (as of today) $3.20, just for the hell of it. Or randomly pick one person in 10 and give them $32.00, as a lesson in the unequal distribution of wealth.


Of course, to scrape together a billion dollars for any of these purposes could be characterized as "socialism," while to see PACs and corporations aim the same dollars toward two political campaigns is called "freedom of expression." According to some mud-slinging ad I saw on TV. I don't remember who it was for, though. I think it had a horse in it, or maybe a soldier.

Money well spent, Presidential candidates.

You Say Potato, I Say Meaningful Economic Recovery

This morning Beloved Spouse - in response to something he read in the paper about the economy - asked if I thought were better off financially than we were before the last Presidential election. To which I replied, "Sorry, let me wipe up that coffee I just spewed all over your shirt through my nose."

Here, let me blot it up using this pile of paper towels
I just happen to have lying around.

Yeah, right.

Although I voted for President Obama in 2008, and will likely vote for him again this year because Mitt Romney makes me break out in a rash, I'll be the first to say I haven't personally felt the mighty rumblings of the earthquake of prosperity since he took office. In general he has scored much higher on the "killing foreign guys who piss us off" scale than on the "what are all these numbers to the left of the decimal point on my bank statement?" scale.

I have some of these.
They're filled with chocolate, right?

The thing about these election-year polls is that they're looking for signs that consumer confidence is up and people feel they can vote issues besides the economy, like whether or not the candidates are complete douchebags. But I think they're looking for answers in the wrong places. The pollsters are looking for people  to say things like "I have a great job" or "I'm putting money in savings" or "I'm now able to hire a nanny from a second-world country."

I'm not saying those are bad indicators. I'm saying that, given the recession we've been through and the flaccid state of the recovery, maybe the pollsters should pull back and consider what "recovery" actually means to some of us.

Why yes, I'd love to use myself as an example.

I am America, after all.

If I had unlimited funds - and by unlimited I don’t even mean if I were rich, I just mean if I didn’t spend the last three days before each paycheck treating Snickers bars as a luxury item - I would spend money on certain things. Like earrings. Seriously, I would buy a dozen pairs of earrings a week if I didn’t have to buy toilet paper. 

They are not interchangeable, you see.

I like earrings. They’re sparkly and pretty and they hang from the one part of my body I don’t feel self-conscious about people looking at. I have awesome earlobes. If there were earlobe porn, I think I could really make a splash. 

And I don’t want to hear about earlobe porn, even if it does exist, which I’m sure it does because God in His glory has yet to create anything that cannot be fetishized by someone, somewhere. It makes you wonder about God.

Am I right?

Anyway, I also like earrings because they can be bought in nearly infinite varieties without spending a lot of money. Or by spending a whole bunch of money, which is a tremendous waste of same. BelSpouse once bought me a pair of earrings for Christmas that I discovered - because he doesn’t understand how online banking works - cost about $200. They’re very pretty, but I hardly ever wear them because I’m afraid to lose them and also because I don’t have any entire outfits that cost $200.

On the other hand, BelSpouse bought me a pair of earrings shaped like turtles with little turtle legs that actually move. They cost a fraction of what the fancy Christmas earrings cost, and I wear them all the damn time. They are seriously adorable. Their little turtle legs move! That’s what I want in my accessories: not precious stones or intricate artistry - I want functional reptile anatomy.

That's also the name of my Doors cover band, by the way.

I would be terribly upset if I ever lost one of my turtle earrings. Not because of their monetary value, but because I love them and I would miss them. I would be terribly upset if I lost one of my $200 earrings, too. Mostly because if I lose something that’s worth a hundred bucks and fits on my fingertip, it should be a couple of tabs of acid or some of Johnny Depp’s pubes, not a piece of overpriced jewelry that someone as irresponsible as myself had no business wearing out in public in the first place.

Or a hundred chances at something really interesting happening.

I could go out and buy 20 pairs of earrings for $200, easy. And if I had $200 that was pure gravy - that didn’t have to be kid’s shoes or a phone bill or Prozac or dish soap or whatever is going on that makes the toilet leak out the bottom every time I flush - that’s just what I’d do.

And I would make sure to buy some I wasn’t really sure I was that crazy about.

Or, you know, the toilet paper ones would work here, too.

See, sometimes I hate making my purchases count. Not that I want to get ripped off because I’m not paying attention - like how sometimes Target charges more for a two-pack of something than it would cost to by two of the same shit separately, as if they think we’re idiot Walmart shoppers who wandered in looking for whatever nasty crap Walmart sells that I wouldn’t know about because that place is freaking evil incarnate and I don’t shop there.

I'm sure Sam Walton was a lovely man
who seldom ate his own children.

But I digress.

I do pay attention to what I’m buying, and I do enjoy getting a good deal. But what I hate about perennially being on a tight budget is having to do things like weighing the relative merits of a can of store-brand new potatoes and the Del Monte potatoes that cost ten cents more but maybe the store-brand ones are so inferior in quality that the extra ten cents is worth it, or maybe I can get away with the cheap ones because they’re just damn potatoes and how can ten cents possibly make them taste like anything else?

Why do I even need new potatoes?
I'm sure I could find gently used ones that are just as good.

I want to just spend the extra dime without thinking about it and not have to worry about the quality of my goddamn new potatoes, is what I’m saying. And I don’t like having to agonize over every single purchase so that I don’t feel I’ve shortchanged my kid out of a year of college if I happen to make an unwise spending decision.

Squeeze it, or the terrorists win.

Now, how many pairs of inexpensive earrings do you think exist in the average shopping mall?  Hundreds? Thousands? Some of them are just butt-ugly. Some of them are pretty cute. And some of them are really, really sweet. And I - because of my level of consumer confidence (remember how we were talking about that?) - feel compelled to pore over every single goddamn pair in the mall to make sure I’m getting the best possible goddamn earrings available for the money. Because if it turns out I don’t have a costume-jewelry orgasm every time I wear them, or they don’t match every outfit I own, or they have like an Indian curse on them or something, then I could be out upwards of eight dollars.

Zut freaking alors.

So here's economic theory according to Chuck Baudeliare: To me, luxury isn’t being able to go into Neiman Marcus or Tiffany’s and pick out a piece of jewelry that costs more than my mortgage payment just because I thought it was a pretty shiny object. It’s being able to drop a few bucks on a pair of earrings that may not be the most special things in the world but only reasonably cute, and not feel guilty that I bought something without performing a complex cost-benefit analysis on it.

If I could, I’d go out and buy 20 pairs of earrings, of which maybe only half of them were something I’d wear every day. Maybe a couple of them would only go with that one outfit that I wear a few times a year. Maybe I’d wear a couple of them once and decide they don’t do anything for me. Maybe I’d even look at one pair and decide to never, ever wear them because I don't know what the hell I was thinking when I bought a pair of hot-pink eagle-feather dangles with silver skulls hanging from them.

I’m getting tingly just thinking about such profligacy.



Having money is hot.

All I'm saying is that before we start anointing a new leader (or re-anointing the current one) based on whether we all think we're going to be able to buy a new Lexus on January 21st, maybe we should think about economic recovery in terms that are slightly less are-you-freaking-kidding-me? in scope.

Also, I'd like some earrings that are shaped like tiny lizards with little sparkly eyes. Promise me that, Presidential candidates, and I might just decide to vote with my earlobes.

A Sticky Situation

Hey, remember a few months ago, when this image and others like it were making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter and other sociopathic media?

The popular backstory was that patriotic, conservative, and not at all moronic Americans were spontaneously leaving clever notes at gas pumps to remind the rest of us that gas prices had doubled under President Obama, whose fault it totally was on account of being born in Kenya. It was the kind of grass-roots activism that has been behind every great movement in our nation's history. Like the civil rights movement. The Tea Party movement.



The "no one ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of the American people"
movement.

But even though the grass-roots aspect of the sticky-note campaign is totally bogus, the assertion that President Obama is responsible for spiking gasoline prices is...wait, let me check something.

Please stand by.

OK, I'm back. The sticky note's information is correct: the average price of gasoline in the United States was approximately $1.78 a gallon on the day President Obama was inaugurated in 2009. And crude oil was trading at - hold on to your nozzles - a little over $32 a barrel. Whoa. By the time Republican superPAC American Crossroads started running TV spots blaming the President for spiraling crude oil and gasoline prices this Spring, oil was trading over $100 a barrel, and the average gas price was at a 12-month high.

Well, that sucks. And it's all clearly the current administration's fault. Because when George W. Bush was still President, the prices were...wait, let me check something.

Please enjoy this amusing chicken.

OK. When George W. Bush was still President, the prices were way freaking higher. For reals.

Source: GasBuddy.com historical price charts. 

So yeah, gas was a wallet-friendly $1.78 a gallon when Barack Obama took office, but only after falling from a record-high $3.94 just six months earlier under George W. Bush. You may have heard news reports in March and April stating that the highest-ever prices had been achieved in either or both of those months, but those prices weren't adjusted for inflation. Here's what the inflation-adjusted numbers look like over the last 35 years (that's three Republican Presidents and three Democrats, if you're keeping track):

Glad I wasn't driving in 1980.
Source: US Energy Information Administration via InflationData.com

And lest we forget what prices looked like during the whole of President Bush's second term:

Why, both crude oil and average gas prices in May 2004 were nearly identical to those in January 2008 when President Obama took office. What on Earth happened during Mr. Bush's administration to cause crude prices to more than quadruple?

Well, a lot of things happened. Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The housing bubble. A huge run-up in global markets that preceded and contributed to the worldwide economic crisis starting in late 2007. The premiere of "Lost." All kinds of things happened in the world, because that's the way it goes. President Bush was directly or indirectly responsible for some of them, contributed to others, and had absolutely nothing to do with "Lost." Did some of those things in turn contribute to the oil-and-gas roller coaster ride of the early 21st century? Undoubtedly. Does that mean anything President Bush did directly caused the price of a gallon of gas to be what it was at any point in time during his administration?

Wow, that would be a stretch, wouldn't it?

Indeed.

So let's be fair. Because here's what crude and refined gasoline prices have been doing for the last three months, since people starting getting all huffy:

If you're going to blame the President for high prices, then give him credit for the current decline, too. Or don't, because that would be crazy. Neither he nor any President controls energy prices that way. In reality, unregulated speculation is behind most of the outrageous fluctuation in crude oil futures, and gas prices are influenced by demand, consumer confidence, and greedy oil refiners who think they can piggyback retail prices on artificial spikes in the commodity markets.

If our current Democratic President would exercise his lefty pinko big-government penchant for regulating those entities more strictly, prices probably would continue to go down. On the other hand, if the Republicans in Congress had their way, there would be even less regulation, and prices could rise all to hell and gone. In which case the sticky-note-leavers would have no choice but to protest against their own party.

Sorry if I blew your mind there.

I don't like paying an arm and a leg for gas. It sucks to be happy that the price at my local fill-em-up station has fallen to "only" $3.19 recently. I would happily go back to paying $1.78. Hell, even $2.78 would make me do a happy chicken dance.

But I don't think voting for President Obama or Wannabe-President Romney is going to make that happen. So everyone who is trying to use gas prices as a for-or-against argument during the current campaign...write it on a sticky note and throw it the hell away.

Yeah, and that too.