Zoinks!

Dear Millicent,

I was washing dishes today, and I very much wanted to make a connection between knowledge of our government/economy/crises, and your frustration with the stains in your mugs.  I think of your mugs because of the need to bring out the big gun–that most indigestible chemical of all to go in a drinking cup, but goddammit, a sanitary chemical indeed–bleach.  I don’t know how it bridges yet.  I’m not arguing for a Fight Club wipe-out of the credit system (well, in my ideal world, yes, but here, now, not my immediate agenda).  I think it is the sheer will involved of “stains! You will behave! I am getting to the bottom of you!” And, the rest of us slowly waking up to this about the mess above that we can pretty much not look at if we don’t watch the news, listen to the radio, or have over a hundred grand in one of the folded banks.

And I don’t know anything.  No money market class for me.  I have got nil sense of what is going on, and probably won’t until somebody makes a documentary about it in 5 years that Netflix recommends because I liked The Corporation.  And then I will be pissed about what is happening right now.

Here is the short list of what I know:

1.) The rich people are going to lose profits.  Not anything that actually affects what they already have, just the amount of extra goodies they get.  It’s like they are now going to go to the Oscars, find their swag bag full of Jessica Simpson shoes and say “What the shit? Where’s my diamond studded I-Phone? This swag bag is junkier than last year, no?”

2.) I don’t have money, or investments.  I actually have no assets.  This might be okay.  Except that next year food and power will probably be more expensive, and I will have to stop buying Jessica Simpson shoes at Dillard’s and ripping out the labels.

3.) This blows for my parents–middle class homeowners with their monies invested.  They are going to have less than they thought they had. They won’t be thinking, at all, about Jessica Simpson’s shoe line.

4.) Universal health care is a crazy dream that crazy people yap about, and that would be impossible to install in our fine country because it is just too complicated.  But, we can scrounge enough money to buy gigantaur businesses that probably already made tons and tons of money from shit healthcare plans, bad coding (insert any insurance lament here), and that doing so is easy, okay, frightening, but affordable. A good deal, really, and we should all calm down and understand how the government can take care of large gangly institutional crises (even though, it really doesn’t want to look like it takes care of things like this).  This reminds me a little of the mom that is really helpful and insightful when it comes to all the friend’s of her kid, but is a lunatic with her own kid.  Not sure this makes sense, but it is mostly me complaining about lack of universal healthcare.

On other fronts, I just tried to make my bathroom into a sauna (even had a cup of salt to try and scrub down the filthy skin I’m in) and, it just wasn’t the same.  Do you think it is possible to make a homemade sauna?  Should I heat up rocks in the oven, and then pour water over them in the tub? I want that shiny happy clean feeling every week or so.  I want to feel like my pores are getting through their day like Elaine from Seinfeld as she drives on Kramer’s adopted highway (he renovates it so that two lanes are now a wide one) and as she drives she thinks “how luxurious!”).  Or, maybe I should just get a loan and install a sauna?

Also, I will be away for the weekend–am off to Minnesota for the nuptials of a dear friend.  I hope there will be Viking Boats and Viking paraphanalia, but I am not holding my breath.  I have thoughts on marriage to share, but am thinking they will be compounded by this wedding, so I will wait to order them into words until I return.

I am watching Doris Day and Jack Lemmon in “It Happened to Jane” while I pack.  It involves a lot of lobsters, and the refrain “that stupid broad.”  So, it is pleasing.

To return with a full report! Keep your brain glinting, the reflection is mahvelous,

Yours,

CF