The Rake Magazine

Tag: recession

  • Fiscal Lubrication

    For those of you lulled into complacency by auspicious
    recent events such as Britney’s brief
    flirtation     with lucidity, it’s important to note that, not only is the
    entertainment industry still pumping out fucking loons
    at a heretofore unheard of pace, but our politicians are providing ample
    evidence of a world view so profoundly divorced from reality that it’s likely
    only a matter of a few short days until Gov. Pawlenty declares "Blame it on the
    Rain"     our state song and Speaker of the House Margaret Kelliher declares her
    undying love for Michelle Bachmann’s fabulously taut ass. In other words, take
    heed, Minnesota denizens, for the Oh Shit meter has gone from a subdued puce to
    an alarming ochre.

    And what has triggered these dire portents? What could
    possibly be serving as the harbinger for yet another pending apocalypse? The
    answer is disarmingly, deceptively simple – nothing more, or less, than the
    overwhelming demonstration of the profound stupidity endemic to all levels of
    our representative democracy.

    These portents have appeared at a furious pace as of late. John McCain’s assertion that Purim is
    the Jewish Halloween    , thus disappointing a highly influential voting block
    as they continue a hallowed tradition of offering a big "Fuck you" to yet
    another culture that tried to annihilate them, was only the beginning. And Dick
    Cheney’s apparent pleasure at providing a big
    "Fuck you"     to the American public as polls indicated two-thirds of
    Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq was just a cherry on top of the mountain of asshattery displayed whilst our policy-makers grandstand and
    pontificate on how best to take advantage of the economic reaming the average
    American feels
    they are about to receive    .

    To address the assembled citizenry’s fervent desire for
    fiscal lubricants to ease the anticipated pain, Obama and Clinton
    have released their economic stimulus and oversight plans. McCain, of course,
    is standing pat, toeing the GOP line as he has for the last few years and
    stating that the check going out to taxpayers in May, not to mention the tax
    breaks for businesses that will surely convince them to invest in added
    infrastructure while consumers aren’t buying anything, is plenty to arouse the
    economy and stimulate a good old-fashioned consumer orgy.

    What baffles me, however, is that the plans put forth by
    these august candidates are, for the most part, predicated on becoming
    president despite all three having plenty of legislative power. And since statistically, recessions are generally over within a year to a
    year and a half, meaning any fiscal policy levied after scoring the presidency
    won’t take effect until January of 2009. Much like downing the morning after
    pill nine months after the condom breaks, that’s long after it could possibly
    do any good.

    Then you might think to yourself, "At least our local
    legislators, staunch realists like Marty Seifert and the Iron Range’s Tom "The
    Sex Hog" Saxhaug, are carefully balancing Minnesotan needs against the harsh
    reality of the budget deficit threatening our government services and
    benefits". If you were harboring such thoughts, you may want to relieve
    yourself of them via repeated
    blows to the cranium     with a blunt object, since you’d be laughably wrong. To
    address the state’s approximately $1 billion deficit, GOP legislators offered a program
    of cuts to higher education, dips into the state’s rainy day fund, and
    bizarrely, a token tax cut to make Minnesotans feel better about the panty raid
    Gov. Pawlenty proposed on the state’s health care access fund and budget reserves. DFLers universally
    derided the deficit fix, calling the proposal shortsighted and damaging. House
    Majority Leader Tony Sertich went so far as to say, "Everyone knows people from
    Eagan are twats. And Tim Pawlenty is a twat among twats. The alpha and the omega of twats, if you will."

    One might imagine the DFL, after such an ideological salvo,
    would come back with a solution to the state’s budget woes. A solution that
    would salvage programs to salve the economic doldrums afflicting our state’s
    citizens whilst securing Minnesota’s solvency for the biennium and beyond.
    Sadly, it seems we’ll sooner see Michelle Bachmann in an Amsterdam donkey show
    than have a budget proposal that actually addresses the real issues facing the
    state. The budget that the DFL’s greatest financial minds came back with dips
    even further into the rainy day fund. And while the $23 million in extra
    education spending is nice, the proposal doesn’t provide any details on the
    program cuts necessary to cover that spending. Nor did they make any attempt at ensuring solvency in the next biennium. Much like the Pawlenty
    administration and inflation, reality and the DFL have never quite meshed.

    Frighteningly enough, the group we must look toward for
    fundamental change in our fiscal policy is the Bush administration. They’ve
    bailed out Bear Stearns despite outcry from left and right, thus avoiding a
    repeat of the market crash that triggered the Great Depression. And we’ve
    already seen some small changes – allowing the Federal Reserve and treasury
    some additional oversight of investment houses and mortgage originators. But
    more meaningful changes, changes that will allow the hand of government to wrap
    itself around the balls of America’s financial system and give a great tug when
    necessary are not yet forthcoming. Can an administration that has spent the vast
    majority of its time in Washington on a ranch in Crawford, TX or up its own ass
    aggressively move to create meaningful legislation? Can a man whose sole method of
    reassuring the public that the economy is in good hands consists of letting us all know
    the government worked over the weekend     actually trigger substantive change?

    Yeah, I know. We’re fucked. But I, for one, welcome our new
    Chinese overlords, and will enjoy receiving the benevolent treatment afforded
    all China’s provinces    .

     

     

  • Hot Stupid Foreign Nannies

    It started like this:

    My 13-year-old daughter walked into a room where I was reading and my husband was opening a bottle of wine (which she would tell you is what we’re always doing, except when we’re working or yelling at her) and said, "You remember when I went to Karl and Julia’s when I was in third grade and their nanny let us slide down that huge dirt hill all afternoon and you got really mad because it was so dirty and dangerous?"

    "Yes," I said, without raising my head.

    "And you remember how you said she was stupid because we could have gotten trapped under the falling dirt and suffocated?"

    "Yes." This time I looked up at my daughter who is powerful and beautiful and full of metal: braces and piercings and rings.

    "She was from Iceland, right? The nanny?"

    "Yes." I was waiting for the point, which is almost always your best bet with a teenager. Assuming can be a minefield.

    "So, I don’t get it. What’s the deal with that?" She was looking perturbed, squinching up her nose.

    "What?" I asked.

    "Hot stupid foreign nannies. That’s what all men want: a hot, stupid, foreign nanny. Why is that?"

    I turned to my husband — poor guy — who was coming with the wine. "That’s what you want?" I said.

    "What?" He hadn’t been listening. He’d probably been pondering string theory or thinking about our taxes. Some ridiculous thing like that.

    "A hot stupid foreign nanny. All men want them. You’re a man. So by the transitive property. . . ." (He’s a mathematician, so I’ll often throw in some irrelevant proof and use it incorrectly, though he’s usually kind enough not to point this out.)

    "Women, too, Mom," my daughter broke in. "Now be fair. Older women just want hot, stupid, Brazilian pool boys."

    "But we don’t even have a pool," I said.

    "What was the question?" my husband asked, putting on his glasses as if this might help.

    "Never mind," the teenager said, rolling her eyes. "I’m going to bed."

    Which is too bad, because she brought up an important point. What is the deal with hot, stupid, foreign nannies and the men who love them? Also, what’s the deal with George Bush, whom I heard on the radio just the other day, talking about how we’re not in a recession — it’s a "slowdown" — when about a third of the people I know have lost their jobs, which feels pretty damn recessed to me?

    About that recession (sorry, "slowdown"), why is it that some of the restaurants and bars and coffeehouses I visit are like tombs, echoing and about to shut down for lack of human traffic, while others are booming — same as always, it seems — filled to bursting by people waving money who can’t wait to get in? It seems strange, but there are few places in the middle, only those on the verge of bankruptcy and those where a spontaneous late-planner still cannot get in.

    What’s the deal with Earl Grey Tea, which is full of overpowering, flowery bergamot, but ubiquitous? Why is the social service system hemorrhaging while we spend millions on a Middle Eastern war? How come we keep driving so much no matter how high the price of gas? And why aren’t more people excited (and thankful) that the writer’s union is back to work?

    Most important, what possessed anyone to bottle the swill called Old Moon Zinfandel? Granted, it was inexpensive — I bought it myself, for $6 — but a lot of good wines are these days. There are decent $5 Chiantis and passable $7 Bordeaux. This Zin, on the other hand, is vile stuff.

    It was just after my daughter departed that my husband handed me a glass. I took a sip and then another, because I couldn’t believe anything called "wine" could possibly taste so bad. It was not just flat, but sinister, containing a dead, clayey flavor I imagined turned my tongue a grayish-brown.

    So horrible was this wine, just those two swallows left me sickened for the rest of the night. I was up late, drinking lemon water, trying to get the stench out of my mouth and pondering the problem of Stupid Hot Foreign Nannies. The question, of course: What to tell the beautiful girl when she awakened. Because when you’re 13 — and when you’re 41, it seems — the world just makes no sense.

  • Diet Coke Will Make You Fat & Other Truths

    So it’s not just your imagination, it actually is true. Those zero-calorie sodas people are popping left and right and up and down, ordering with their cheeseburgers and large fries and drinking instead of coffee in the morning or wine at night, actually lead to (or, as they say in medical-speak, "are linked to") metabolic syndrome, which is a fancy way of saying fat and all its attendant ills.

    An article in the New York Times, based upon a study done partly at the University of Minnesota, states that people who drink diet sodas are 18 percent more likely to have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and abdominal obesity. Now, I have to admit, there’s a part of me that wants to lecture here because WHAT after all did you expect, drinking something that contains not a single natural ingredient (except water) and floods your system with something called Aspartame — which is, by the way, one of the most widely-tested "foodstuffs" in history because it has been "linked to" (again, those words) a variety of different cancers and neurological disorders?

    Not that I blame you. I don’t mean to be churlish. Big advertising did a huge number on the population of the entire world. But come on, this isn’t rocket science. What it is is rocket fuel.

    Moving on, after years of pushing decaffeinated coffee on us, calling coffee a vice, and putting it on the health questionaires alongside queries about things like seatbelt use and unsafe sex (How many sexual partners have you had in the past year? How many whose health history is unknown to you? How many that hung out in heroin parlors with dealers named Rufus or Big Mama and had a strange, yellow tint to their skin? Oh, also, how many cups of coffee a day do you drink?) — surprise!!

    Coffee is good for you. Really good for you (unless, am I the only one jaded enough to think this?, Starbucks paid for the research). Scientists are now saying that coffee has more antioxidants than any other food: blueberries, green tea, even — you’re not going to believe this — red wine. It’s long been known that coffee prevents certain chronic diseases, such as Parkinson’s and diabetes. Now, the news is, it also has cancer preventives and more fiber than Metamucil. You know, that beverage you’ve been eschewing all these years in favor of caffeine-free Diet Coke. . . .

    Well, who could have known? Except, of course, those Abyssinian goatherders who used to chew on the berries from coffee bean trees back in the 5th century. Under no circumstances would you catch those guys drinking carbonated N-L-alpha-aspartyl-L-phenyl-alanine-1-methyl ester.

    Now, to switch topics entirely, about that recession that isn’t coming? Funny thing, it seems to have arrived. (Quick, someone go break the news to W.)

    Here’s what I don’t understand. I’m a lowly writer living in the Midwest, a Gen X’er who tends to be blasé about dire economic situations — I graduated from college and landed smack into one of the most humbling, after all — and is utterly distracted by the business of raising teenagers. Yet, I saw the signs.

    Gas prices, layoffs, housing. Hmmm. I was prepared for this problem. The Feds, apparently, were not. Of course, they’re not living down in the trenches, gassing up their Saturns at places with security cameras that record the license plate numbers of those who fill up and fly. They haven’t scaled back their grocery budget from $200 a week to $175 in order to save up for the winter heat bill, which is going to be a beast this year. They aren’t talking to friends of theirs: service providers, mind you — people who own cafes and coffeeshops — who say they may have to close if the numbers don’t stop plummeting.

    So are you ready for the good news? God, yes, I know you are.

    OK, here it is: Castello di Monsanto Chianti Classico Riserva 2004 (does it make you think of chemically-enhanced spaghetti sauce, too?). A $23-25 wine, available at Costco for somewhere in the neighborhood of $15. No Aspartame, tons of antioxidants, pretty much recession-proof. This is as smooth as a rugged Italian wine dares to be, made from mostly the standard Sangiovese grapes, but also Canaiolo and Colorino. Then it’s aged in Slavonian oak casks and French barriques.

    I’m not even sure what Slavonian oak is, but the result is a wine with equal parts raspberry, chalk, and loam, as well as a sweet, mushroomy flavor that brought to mind the colorful, spotted toadstools of fairytales. (I imagine Slavonia to be a place where tiny gnomes frolic in the grass with pointed Italian hats on their hairy little heads.) The finish on the Chianti is clear and clean and oaky, like a single note drawn on the G-string of a violin.

    The only downside here is that you must go to Costco in order to get the Monsanto at an affordable price. And this is a place where very unhealthy looking people, clearly suffering the effects of a nonexistent recession, are buying enormous flats of Diet Coke. Please be kind to them, for they know not what they do. And forge on, holding fast to these truths.