economy – Page 13 – Hopeful Romantics

Revolution and the Loss of Soft Toilet Paper

Some years ago I used to joke that America would only launch a revolution should we encounter such catastrophes as the loss of our favorite toilet paper. Forget the Tax Day Tea Parties and the grousing over bankers’ bonuses. Those are but minor episodes when compared to the prospect of harsh toilet tissue. Now it seem there is some truth to that remark, according to an article in the U.K.’s Guardian.

The article maintains that Americans have a love affair with soft toilet paper is made from virgin wood. Not remnants, nor any recycled material, but pure tree. In other countries, toilet paper is made from as much as 40% recycled material, but not here. Here in order to swipe our buttocks in the comfort to which we are accustomed, we need pure, virgin wood for that extra quilted ultra-soft, muti-layered roll of bathroom tissue we reach for with little concern.

Sure, we may make noise about saving the environment, and we go on about saving the trees and developing non-fossil energy forms, but in the end we waste a precious resource each time we wipe our end. To support this issues, a study reports that there was a 40% increase in the costlier brand of toilet paper in 2008. The premium brands are often infused with hand lotion or aloe vera. Seems everything contains aloe vera, these days, but I digress.
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As American we already consume more paper than any other country. It is one thing to use the precious resource for developing majestic theories of life on earth, but quite another to waste itour on our bodily waste. With companies spending millions of dollars every year telling us their premium brands are far superior to the recycled stuff, it is small wonder softer toilet paper is more precious to us than say our Hummers.

I once had an assistant whose very demanding metrosexual boyfriend insisted she run around the city picking up the household products he most desired. His favorite bathroom tissues was sold, it seemed, at bulk rates at only one big box store. This tissue was infused with the notorious aloe verga gel. So to keep him happy, a tough task on a good day, my assistant had to use up what little spare time she had running across town to buy him toilet paper. Not only was she wrecking trees, but burning gasoline in these senseless journies.

Perhaps this recession is the time when we get our heads on street or at least take our head out of our you know where. Maybe we will see the light and find we really don’t need to be using virgin wood to accommodate our daily needs. We can remove our heads from our pampered derrieres and replace them with paper made from recyled products.

Traveling Through Life on a Mobility Scooter

Ever since a recent trip to Las Vegas, I noticed more and more people driving mobility scooters. We are not talking about sexy Vespas here, hearkening back to the classic French and Italian films of the sixties, where young lovers tooled around Rome and Paris on their two cycle models. We are not even talking about the upgrades, the current scooters serving as answers the stratospheric price of gasoline and the lack of parking in the cities. Instead, what is under discussion are these boring little machines that look insipid when a big rear end is hanging over its seat.

I didn’t even know mobility scooters existed until several years ago when I first noticed late night cable commercials on the television. The company that was selling these contraptions assure the prospective buyer that if the advertiser believed the person qualified for one on their health care policy and were later turned down, then the advertiser would give the customer one for free. You can’t beat that.

The commercials which saturated the cable stations demonstrated the mobility scooters ease of use, and how easily it stored in the trunk. The commercials showed happy old people who were otherwise unable to get around living what was described as a normal life thanks to their new set of wheels and rechargeable electricity. Here they were shopping, riding through the park, playing with the grandchildren. Or here they were sitting around three four of them, like geriatric bikers, chatting it up in the retirement sunshine.

Naturally, I believe these mobility scooters were for people who couldn’t walk because they were either handicapped or so ravaged by age their legs could no longer be trusted. This in itself was a good thing, until I saw my own mother try out the courtesy scooter in a Trader Joe’s and nearly run over four people and a display stand of boxed cookies. It gave me pause. During what must have seemed to the store clerks as her interminable stint around the aisles I was laughing too hard to be embarrassed. Comedy today is wherever you can find it.

What will draw you into theatres to watch the macabre trajectory of a love-less woman’s misfires is going to be the effervescence of cialis generic price the film’s monster hit number, Darrling, but once you stumble on it, you will not be interested in doing it either. Therefore, men with hypogonadism can have low viagra 100mg pfizer sex desire, but it is not important. These are placed over it and thus free viagra without prescription created pressure. Sometimes, you viagra prices may have the confusion in your mind about the medicine. But I digress. Since the mobility scooters first came on the scene, I have seen them everywhere. I have seen them on Sunset Boulevard here in Los Angeles; I have seen additional courtesy mobility scooters added to the Big Box stores. I have seen what appeared to be caravans of them in Las Vegas, parading down the sidewalks or along the thoroughfares inside the casinos. Given the economy and a handful of other things, that has to be the perfect statement to the downside of our culture. One of them, anyway. We are scootering to hell in a hand basket.

What gets me is that these are not necessarily people who are unable to walk. These are people who are either too lazy to walk or too fat to want to try. These are people who could walk but would rather zip around on their mobility scooters. Whether or not they actually buy them or get their health care plants to write them off is another matter. If health care is picking these things up, then we are paying for them as well as part of our increased health care payments.

As the cost of health care goes up, fewer people can afford it. We’re talking here about people who actually need health care. Not just so they can get a mobility scooter and tool around without having to bother putting one foot in front of the other. We’re talking about families who are priced out of health care payments because, among other things, the mobility scooters add to the overall costs.

But then we are a society where we believe people have the right to be lazy and indulgent. Where they can eat what they want, drink what they want, smoke it up, and then complain to, say the airlines that the seat belt isn’t large enough to go around their bellies.

So in spite of our anger over Wall Street, the mortgage fraud schemes, banking, and whatever else is working on our nerves, some of us, don’t seem to get it. We will run up the health care cost for no other reason than we are too lazy to walk and too indulgent to lose the weight that allows them to walk. We can talk about our rugged individuality and all that good old American jingo, but with some of us, anyway, instead of climbing back up the mountain, we are puttering along on a scooter.

When Fashion Boutiques Go Bust

Anyone with a few brain cells left floating between their ears understands that the economy is lousy and times are tough. They may not know why that happened, or, like most, they may be blaming any number of things. But the rich are feeling the pinch and those who were pretending to be rich or were rich for twenty minutes, are discovering they can no longer afford what they are used to having.

So the independent boutiques are suffering. The same great fashion forward, taste making, trendsetting, repositories of cutting edge fashion are looming as an endangered species. The same tony venues that brought such clothing designers as Giorgio Armani, Jil Sanders, and Dries Van Nooten to the American consciousness are faced with the reality of customers who can’t afford the goods they sell.

While the department stores are faced with the lack of customers, the big guys can offer incentives that the little goes are uncapable or presenting. Instead they have to cut budgets, which means ordering less stock, or ordering stock on consignment. They must haggle with their star designers to get cheaper pricing and extended payment terms.

This is not the way of the fashion forward boutique. A few years ago, hell, even a year ago, most would look at you funny if you wanted to buy something for a mere hundred bucks. The sales people would smirk at your ignorance, if you seemed either unprepared or less aware of the newest, latest, greatest new names making their presence felt on the runways. But now the duties alone on some of the imported clothing can put the price points out of range.

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Surely the rich will still buy fashion. Although, surveys reveal the rich may buy the same brands, but they are not buying the quantity they did before. As for those consumers buying over their heads, they are drowning. And the great purveyors of cutting edge fashion are falling by the wayside, one by one.

New designers will come along. Deisgners who can sell cheap enough or have domestic roots, eliminating the need for the surcharge related to duties. These will be designers who may make clothes that are rugged and built to last. No little nothing shoes for $1 Thousand Bucks that can barely make it through a season. And forget those $5 Thousand Dollar bags. As for jewelry, if you want to wear expensive bangles and bling, you are liable to get robbed. Others out there don’t really care who designed it. Only that it can buy them another meal, or another fix.

But new designers will emerge. Over time they will be pronounced the new kings and queens of the runway. They will influence our sense of aesthetics and impact our lives. And then they too are liable to out price themselves, putting their fashion sense just out or reach of their adoring public. The retailers who believed in them, who heralded them, and introduced them in their shops, will be faced again with another crisis. People who need to be cool but who can’t afford to pay the price.

High School was never this stressful.

When Cosmetic Surgery is Put on Hold

Okay, so clearly we are emerging from a period of excess with surplus of everything and no money to buy it. We have become used to the rituals of skin, hair, and body enhancement, including everything from expensive but dubious products to laser treatments, Botox, and cosmetic surgery. We have been waxed, primped, cut, coddled, massaged and injected.

We try to look younger, cuter, more handsome. We have penis enhancement, hair implants, testosterone shots, and steroids. We pull back our faces and suck the fat from our belly’s and legs. And now we are broke, maxed out on the charge cards, out of cash, and no savings to speak of. We are screwed. And we are not as good as we want to look.

But across the board there have been serious reductions in the volume of cosmetic surgery. It is so critical, fancy doctors are offering deals. Get a face lift and tummy tuck in a package deal. Get your eyes done, your ass lifted; get the cellulite out of your legs. Cosmetic surgeons are hawking their wares, almost going out into the street and forcing patients with their scapels. It’s almost like an old Earl Scheib commercial where if you get “Diamond Gloss” or whatever they named the paint, they would remove a few nicks and dents as part of the deal.

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We will have to get over the fact we are organisms that fall victim to gravity. No more hopes we will look like some of our two bit idols who, truth is, in reality never look like they do after five hours of primping. For romance, we will have to resort to charm and what looks we have. We will have to be engaging, doing something different, instead of uttering the same-same and expecting sparks to fly. We may be to be good at conversation; we may have to polish our sense of humor. We will have to, heaven forbid it, learn again the meaning of irony.

So sex may not seem as much as a Chanel commercial, but it’s still sex. Besides, Chanel isn’t advertising all that much. Our recreational activities will look less like the ad for some tropical destination and more like people who actually sweat. Those non-Botox injected worry lines will reveal at least a form of intelligence. Who but the dumbest among us isn’t worried during this economy?

But, hey, look at the bright side, you can still shave your pubes. It’s either this or you sit cloistered inside your room, firing down ice cream and watching movies, talking to your friends and wishing for the good old days. But remember, if the good old days were really that good, they wouldn’t have left us here.

Barbie is Now the Older Woman

It was announced that Barbie is fifty-years-old. She is looking pretty good for fifty, considering all the changes she has been through over the years. She stays trim, colors her hair so nicely; go figure that she is ready for her AARP card. According to an article in Media Post, Mattel will be offering a whole raft of celebrations in honor of its famous doll. There will be fashion shows, assorted partnerships, and a real life dream house.

Is Barbie something special? Yes, she really is. She is an icon a mixed metaphor of American prosperity and indulgence. She is romantic, a symbol of how things should be in life. Of course, when you are Barbie, you will never experience the difficult times of an economic downturn. Unless Mattel develops a marketing strategy behind it, you will never see Barbie in rags, clipping coupons, asking for federal assistance.

Perhaps the most tell-tale sign of Barbie’s worldwide popularity is the time right before the fall of Eastern or Communist Germany. East Germans were given money by the West Germans for a rare acrosss the border shopping trip. For the East Germans, it was going from a place with barely the necessities and few options, to a land of surplus and many different options. What did they buy? They bought Barbie Dolls. Barbie Dolls were the biggest seller.
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We have joked about Barbie, made fun of her and her boyfriend, Ken. We have seen Barbie manifest herself in many different personalities, and a plethora of outfits. Dress her up, dress her down; she is still Barbie. And Barbie is part of our history, like Mickey Mouse, and Luke Skywalker. She is at the place in our culture where fiction intersects with our dreams and forms a working reality. She is part of us. She is timeless.

We will never see Barbie in a scandal. She will never be arrested for drunken driving or taking drugs. She will never go out with the wrong guy, get knocked up, and then make the tabloids in some sleazy divorce. She will never wrinkle with age, and we will never wonder what lubricants she uses for post-menopausal encounters. She will never smell, and she will never get sick on us. In turn, we will never get sick of her.

She is a winner, and America loves its winners. Happy Birthday, Barbie.