(My Republican Boet’s 42nd)
The other day I was driving a familiar corridor of Ventura Blvd. when at least 5 cars either U-turned, cut-in-front-of-me, or slammed on their brakes (for no apparent reason) in-less-than-a-block’s worth of driving: and I was stone-cold sober – so it wasn’t my imagination. Then, on the return trip home – some fool in opposing traffic got into my driving lane to make a left turn: I can only hope that the cop who U-turned right in-front-of-me was going to sort this traffic menace out.
Something is certainly amiss. I know, I know – anyone who reads me knows that I hate driving, and that I simply may have been “in a mood.” Couple this possibility with the fact that Californians are probably the worst drivers in-the-world – and we have a nice convenient explanation to the traffic nonsense I was party to. But I think there’s-more-to-it-than-this – we’ve got to peel back more layers of the sociological onion to get to the deeper meaning…
I keep asking Brother Paul how Wilson Sporting Goods in America is doing (Brother Paul is a sales rep for Wilson) – because I don’t understand how a company that primarily caters to the bourgeois isn’t being negatively impacted by the credit crunch and increasing unemployment: I mean, is it going to be groceries for the week, or, a tennis racket for Crissakes! Brother Paul says they’re doing fine – but was oblivious to-the-fact that our father was about to lose his medical coverage with General Motors (as will our mother). Now granted, my father (at 86) has surpassed the average life expectancy – but our mother (at 74) hasn’t even come close to the average life expectancy for a woman living in the good old U.S. of A. (and let us hope that our country’s abbreviation NEVER stands for the United States of Assholes…)
But what I really think is going on is that people are short circuiting. People are realizing that they are broke – and the credit and welfare avenues have been blocked. People are driving around in cars that they can’t afford, pumping gas they can’t afford – and probably fucking people they can’t afford – and there’s no end in sight to the free-fall of the American economy: inspired as-it-is by unlimited growth, conspicuous consumption and unbounded greed.
Here in sunny, SoCal – plenty of folks are house rich – they made lotsa dough buying and selling – and that’s how us SoCal people like to work (by-and-large) – by making a purchase that we can sell for way more than we bought it for. I just attempted to purchase a condo in my favorite town of Ventura – and admittedly, low-balled the owner. But I know that this owner is going to be low-balled way worse than what I offered and will be more than willing to consider my offer at-some-point in-the-not-so-distant-future. But I’m not so sure I want a condo anymore: I think getting a boat to escape the land might be the wiser option.
In fact, I only know of one person who got what she wanted for a house that was incredibly over-priced in the fading market – and that was Zoe: who found a grandpa sap who bought his needy-assed, divorced daughter with grandchildren — Zoe’s place. How do I know this? Because Giti and I wanted to buy this place: I’m STILL wondering if Zoe was CIA…?
Well, I hope for my Brother’s sake that people can still afford tennis rackets, and, I hope that Arnold secures that $7 billion loan to keep California solvent – cuz I’m still not close to retiring, and have two sons to turn into responsible worker bees. But I understand that the worker bees are dying in the thousands – something has apparently short-circuited the bee communities…could it be…no honey, er, money?