Needless Markup

I’m still recovering from the agony and the ecstacy of being a Giants fan. Now I have to try to understand the election? Was there really a Teapocylypse? Is a Blue Dog a bad dog? What about the Congressional Commission? We just had a huge surplus and now there’s a tremendous deficit. I am still proud of my “A” in college statistics and I love a good bar graph or pie chart, but some numbers are higher than I can even visualize. Trillions, billions. What does it all mean?

I understand that, although neither of them won, more people in California voted to legalize marijuana than for Meg Whitman. I voted for Brown with a sense of despair. This state is MESSED UP. I disagree with the premise, that we, as voters, are qualified to run this state by initiative. Unlike Meg Whitman, I always vote. The reason I vote these people into office is so they will make these decisions. I expect them to know more about things than I do. We all know the initiatives are written to trick people. Sadly, it works.

On a local level, our county supervisors have never met a consultant they didn’t want to hire. It’s all about covering their you know what. If they don’t want to take responsibility for the massively expensive policies they’re creating, then they shouldn’t be in office. With the pension bombs exploding left and right we see so clearly how self-serving politicians truly are. Pandering to their district, the lobbyists, the special interests, their sex drive - it’s overwhelming. I had a huge crush on Eliot Spitzer until he turned out to be Client Number 9. I thought he was so sexy in a tough, smart, New York white collar kind of way. Now he’s just another slime ball.

Life is too complicated. Maybe I need to lie down and stop thinking about it all. Oh, look, it’s the Neiman Marcus holiday entertaining catalog. Look at this gorgeous food. I can just order Thanksgiving dinner online. Fabulous. Dinner for eight. They don’t offer Turducken so we’ll just have to be traditional. We’ll start with Brie en Croute ($60.00) and stuffed mushroom caps ($75.00) as an appetizer. Add broccoli and cheese casserole ($78.00), green beans ($70.00), some glorified mashed potatoes ($65.00) and sweet potatoes ($52.00). Put corn bread stuffing ($60.00), turkey (only $65.00), cranberry relish ($45.00) and one pecan and one pumpkin pie ($50.00 each) into the “shopping cart”. Terrific.

Let’s see. Including tax and shipping charges the grand total is over nine hundred dollars. Add some wine and rolls and you are talking about a very pricey meal. AND you still need to do all the set up and clean up. We could order Thanksgiving dinner for eight at our local, independent grocery store for only $l50.00. Seems like a bargain as we once spent that much there for a piece of meat (and a head of garlic) for Christmas dinner. Besides, I love the market and we have to support it or our friend, Cris, whose family owns it, will be mad.

Eric’s been doing a little perusing of Neiman Marcus catalogs, as well. He’ll read anything I leave in the bathroom. He’s had some fun with this one and thought he could do a little of his own online shopping. He was tempted by the Tory Burch family chariot electric tricycle (pictured with purse dogs - no doubt extra) for forty-five hundred, but there’s also the gingerbread playhouse for fifteen grand to consider. He was also charmed by descriptions of a trip to the cultural hub of Marfa, Texas, where a concierge will work with you to create a “one-of-a-kind” experience of three days and four nights. Trips to Hawaii are usually sold as four days, three nights, but whatever. This is Texas and for a starting price of $9,500 per couple, not including transportation, it’s such a deal. The other option is the tequila party for up to seventy-five guests in your home for $l25,000.00. That’s one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. A celebrity chef and celebrity event planner are also included with the VERY special tequila.

There used to be an expression, “stupid money” meaning people had so much money they could be stupid with it. Really stupid. It’s not so easy since we’ve lost our dots and coms. I still know quite a few people with money. LOTS of money, and none of them are stupid. I don’t know who IS stupid enough to buy some of these catalog items, but apparently there must be someone. Right? Perhaps it’s the people who just closed on a house one town over for 6.3 million cash. Maybe they need a housewarming tequila party and a Tory Burch Tricycle and a gingerbread playhouse. Forget the trip to Marfa. They probably don’t have enough money left and have to stay home.