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July 14, 1998
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Today's Narragansett Vocabulary Words: Kussuttah - It is hot. |
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The temperature is in the 90's and the mold spore count is off the charts. According to the radio news, the mold spore count is the highest that has ever been recorded here: 6000 and some parts per million. No wonder my throat feels like there's a rock lodged in it. I get that way during mold allergy. So here I am writing at the end of the 20th century under late capitalism. I went to the local Hallmark store to buy a get well card for my brother Billy who is in the hospital and some kind of a card for my brother Thomas who crashed his car. They don't have "screech, crash, total" cards. Anyway, there I was at the Hallmark store browsing the cards when I noticed a brand new display of Christmas ornaments and a pile of catalogs detailing all of Hallmark's collectible ornaments for Christmas '98. It's 92 in the shade on Bastille Day and they're putting up the Christmas displays?!? When I was a kid, the nuns told us that Christmas displays in the store before Thanksgiving were a sign of economic depression. Really. That's what they told us. If we ever saw Christmas cards and ornaments on sale in July we could be sure it was the second coming of the Great Depression. So here we are at the end of the millennium under late capitalism with the chairman of the Federal Reserve telling us the economy is as good as it gets, and the Christmas displays are up on Bastille Day. What does this tell us about the economy? The economy is actually all smoke and mirrors. We are not really in a boom.It just looks that way on paper. Practically nobody has health insurance anymore. Computer companies are claiming a labor shortage because they can't get people to work 100 hours a week for entry level wages. Allegedly there are tons of people in their late forties and early fifties who have been laid off and need jobs but the computer companies won't hire them. And whatever happened to all those middle managers who got the axe in the late 80's? What are they living on? Are they all working at Mickey D's? They're not counted in the unemployment statistics, which keep dropping to record lows. There's no money for anything anymore. Corporations can't afford to make donations to charities and arts organizations - they have to count paper clips to make the bottom line look right so their stock can be overvalued. There's no federal money for the arts or for human services. There's just no money around anymore. Where did it all go? Must be the mold spores. They're affecting my brain. They obviously interact with the part of my brain that came within 3 credits of getting a master's degree in economics in the early 70's. Maybe whatever blew my computer's 32 meg memory chip affected my brain. That's it, I caught something from my computer. Along with the mold spores. So where was I, oh yeah, I went to the Hallmark store in search of get well cards and was amazed and alarmed at the Christmas displays. That got me started on the economy. By the way, the spell checker suggests "Bestowal" for "Bastille". Vive la France. |
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