March 30, 2009

If love is blind, why bother with lingerie?

Last Thursday, I died my hair black. Oh sure, my hair is normally dark, but still, this was so black, it was almost blue. Saturday evening, I pointed out to my husband that Hey! I dyed my hair black! On Thursday!

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I am not sure if I have mentioned this, but apparently, if you soak an electronic item in water, then stick it in the refrigerator, the refrigerator may help dry the thing out. I have done this successfully with my Treo twice (Anjali's drool) and my Nano once (Arun's waterboarding techniques. Sadly, while the Nano has survived the waterboarding, the charger has not. I can report that it was stoically silent to the end. RIP, charger.) This is particularly heartwrenching because I have been "wogging" (walk a lap, jog a lap) at the gym and I need music. I need to hear about life and love's injustices via the wisdom of Katy Perry, Pink, Carrie Underwood, Madonna, Laura Branigan.

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The other day, Anjali Sr. had a great piece on the current state of financial affairs in our country. I love reading Anjali's blogs (on She Started It and on Skirt!) because she has an amazing capacity for charity towards mankind that I have difficulty reaching myself. I am a cynic at heart, but Anjali's writing usually forces me out of my negative comfort zone and encourages me to think.

In her post, she ponders the Blame Game going on in our current economy whereby may folks are pointing fingers at the consumers:

But I get frustrated by all of this talk — about how over the past several decades materialism has invaded the human mindset and is responsible for the erosion of common sense and responsibility. Because something tells me that underneath it all, this isn’t the whole truth.

Andrew Sullivan linked to these charts. His conclusion, I suppose, is that Americans, as well as American government, began a love affair with debt and credit, which is partially responsible for the mess we’re in.

I need some more evidence before I believe that this is the case for the majority of Americans. I have plenty of friends and relatives who are classic overspenders, who binge on things they think they deserve just for breathing. Their entire lives are on credit. They get new cars every few years and go out to eat for dinner several times as week as if they are executives at Microsoft. They go on cruises, buy clothes all the time, etc. But most people I know don’t do these things.

I do agree that most of our issues were dealt at the hands of the knuckleheads on Wall Street and a very greedy core of folks who thought gambling in the real estate market was a safe choice. And I do agree that some honest folks were sucked into this maelstrom. Still, I think we have become a nation of Must Haves and that many of us were playing a dangerous game of chicken with our credit cards. And now we are paying the price. The nice thing to come of this is that it is now becoming fashionable to be a cheapskate! Which is really an awesome trend. I know I could do well to get more tightfisted.

Anyway, I encourage you to hop over to Anjali's place - there is some good conversation over there.

1 comment:

Anjali said...

Wow. When you said you linked to my post, you said nothing about totally letting me take over your blog! How very kind of you. As always, I love your take on issues, too.