Well, it’s been a while since I felt either the urge or need to post my scattered observations. Now that spring is in the air and the days are growing longer (actually they still have 24 hours apiece) I am compelled to again vent and/or spew.

I am watching the unraveling of the capitalist dream with great interest and amusement. Before the Great Depression of Ought-Nine, the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer.  Now that the shit has finally hit the fan, we see another trend. The rich are still getting richer and the poor are still getting poorer. As Pogo used to say, we have met the enemy, and it is us. While I sympathize with those who now struggle to feed the family and keep the homestead, I can’t help but chuckle at the chicken-little scramble to explain what the hell is going on. I think it’s simple. We are greedy, self-interested, self-aggrandizing bastards and the truth has caught up with the fairy tale. We have a lot of stuff, and it’s filling the hole we have dug to acquire it faster than we can chuck all the crap into the abyss.

I have always been engaged in this struggle to survive, as have most of us. I was presented with great opportunity in both education and access which I tossed aside to pursue the life of a musician. Teachers, parents, family and friends characterized me as an underachiever, lazy, lacking drive, directionless, complacent and a variety of other adjectives and phrases which, when reduced to a semantic minimum, spelled L-O-S-E-R.  Now in the light of the world shitting on itself, I emerge as all of these things, with the addition of another characterization heretofore not a part of the description: visionary. I could not be more smugly proud and pleased.

All during the 80′s, when Bonzo’s buddy urged us to drive big, fast, luxurious cars, I wondered to myself, “Where is all this money coming from?” During the tech-boom of the 90′s, when the Republicrat-in-Chief, Mr. Dress Stains himself, held up his thumb and patted us on the collective back as our housing square-footage requirements expanded exponentially, I thought, “Where is all this money coming from?” Well, we now have the answer to my questions. Nowhere. It never existed. It was all paper, all unreal. Only blind faith in our pay-as-your-grandchildren-go lifestyle allowed us to reward the shrewd, the persistent, the determined with more and more creature comforts. Most of these things, of course, became landfill and now the most elaborate suburban spreads have become white elephants with untenable mortgage payments. Well, I for one know exactly how to live on a meager income. I’m about as worried about the future as I never was because I have tapped into the great truth of life on earth: we are entitled to not one damned thing.

For those who are freaking out about the skyrocketing costs of a latte, I say: Try Eight-o-Clock coffee. To those who don’t know how they will replace their SUV as it begins its premature rusting process, I say: Get a beater. To those who scurry about in panic over the burgeoning deficit, I say: You can’t lose what you’ve never had. It’s all so simple. Just be a bum. It’s easy and it’s most definitely affordable. You will remain ulcer-free, your blood pressure will plummet, and you will become a burden on the rest of the populace, much like the CEO of AIG and the bomb-addicted buffoons in the Pentagon. Billions for “defense”, hundreds for the kids.

In short, to those of you who are concerned that this fiscal fiasco may cause you to end up up like me and the millions whose only portfolio contains pictures from childhood summer vacations in the Wisconsin Dells, I offer this suggestion. Try it, it ain’t so bad.