economy – Page 14 – Hopeful Romantics

Picking on Michael Phelps

Michael Phelps smoked some marijuana. That’s right. Hard to believe isn’t it, that a 23 year-old man actually huffed some grass through a bong. But, nevertheless, there you are. The record breaking winner of an unprecedented eight Olympic gold medals sometimes likes to toke down a bowl.

For this, Kellogg will not renew his contract. Kellogg, founded in the nineteenth century by renowned nut job and corn flakes manufacturer, John Harvey Kellogg, will allow Phelps’ contract to expire, which is due to happen shortly. If you think Kellogg, the man, was just another cereal guy, read his writings sexuality and the ways to prevent masturbation, install cages around the organs, and what he deemed as other nasty habits. I think most agree that his recommendation he apply carbolic acid to the clitoris in order to prevent sexual arousal is just a wee bit over the top. You can think that one over when you chow down on your next bowl of Corn Flakes.

Subway, on the other hand, will stand by the star swimmer, perhaps let a little time transpire before using Phelps to promote their sub sandwiches. I suppose the powers that be at Subway assume the public will be forgiving for Phelps’ great transgression. That or they will attract the stoner crowd who after a few bong hits of their own will get the munchies and march on down for the foot long special

By comparison, Bernard Madoff just took off his trusting clients for something like $50 Billion, one of a number of Ponzi schemes beginning to surface. Madoff ruined people, took every last dime, stole their retirement money, and ripped off foundations and charities. Considering also, that there are those in Wall Street on just drove the country into the ground, who also ruined retirement funds and countless businesses, Michael Phelps’ great transgression seems to pale by comparison.

I am not one to do drugs, nor am I one to promote them. I do, however, believe we should strive to retain a sense of proportion, and with the nation suffering from economic recession, this is no time to nullify our heroes for something this inconsequential, or, for that matter, something so common. If anything, we should suppress a yawn, rather than demonstrate our righteous indignation.
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Millions of people in this country smoke grass. We can rail about it, thump our self-righteous doctrines all day long, but at the end of that day a good many younger people will join a good many older people in taking a hit on their favorite bong. In places like California, if smoking marijuana isn’t legal, it is about as close as you can be without a full declaration. Over all, except for places where the ever vigilant South Carolina sheriff who has threatened to prosecute Michael Phelps for his heinous acts, nobody really cares much about who is smoking marijuana.

But yet we have another big stink, and the stink clouds one of our greatest sports performers, not in a sweet and funky haze of grass, but over something that perhaps could have been ignored. Granted, Phelps was stupid for smoking and risking his endorsements. But he is a kid, after all, and if kids don’t have the latitude to be at least somewhat foolish, then who does?

As for Kellogg, if it had any sense it would let the matter pass and continue to use Phelps as its spokesman. Perhaps it is its heritage that keeps it from doing so. Perhaps having a sexually repressed individual who was phobic about smoking, drinking, just about everything but corn flakes, peanut butter and enemas, can prevent an evolved company from perceiving how little the bong hit matters to the world.

In fact, it may even be prudent for Kellogg or some other company to feature Phelps on the cover of its package, bong in hand. There is a strong enough demographic, a target market, if you will, to make a case for a more liberal minded presentation. Perhaps they would see even more cereal in a down market. That would be something. Just think what it may do to their thinking. They might even need a bong hit, just to come down from the shock.

Virginity Marketing, Exchanging Your Cherry for an Education

Here is a new twist on the virginity thing or the bit about saving it for marriage. The new meaning would translate to save it for a college education. In this case it would be for a Masters Degree in Family and Marriage Therapy. Both virginity and a mind are terrible things to waste.

According to an article in the London Telegraph, a young woman is willing to auction off her maidenhood in exchange for enough cash to finish her education. As luck would have it, ten thousand men stepped up to the plate and put their money where their desires are. So far, this woman from San Diego, is entertaining bids in excess of $3.7 Million. That sure beats the hell out of working in Starbucks.

I am sure there are a fair share of perverts and the type of crazo who figures he is in love with her, just because of the proposition. The virgin in question here is certainly an attractive woman, but she sure ain’t turning heads away from Paris Hilton or any other sex figure of the moment. For this kind of money one could have sex with every virgin in some small, developing country. Some will even fake it for half-price.

One has to wonder about the attraction or fetish, you pick the definition, for men who would spend millions for maidenhood. Frankly, I don’t get it. And just as frankly, neither does the party who is auctioning it off for college. She says she was inspired by her sister who worked as a hooker for three weeks to pay her own way through college. Feminists must be having a field day with this whole business. But then there are issues of empowerment and independence. Who knows?

Some people are lucky, because a good relationship behavior was modeled in the home and they grew up on, nor are they professional driving instructors who understand the subtle nuances that can turn a decent teen driver into a great teen driver. sildenafil uk buy Kamagra jelly buy cheap viagra is commonly used by men. Everyone suffering from pharmacy on line viagra daveywavey.tv this problem wants to get an effective remedy for this problem. When viagra generika the gallbladder is gone, the sphincter can start to spasm, which creates pressure inside the bile and pancreatic ducts and supports the proper flow of the gallbladder to prevent the rising pressure within the bile ducts. Turning tricks for dollars is an age old profession. We all know that. But what we all didn’t know, it was only a mere conjecture, was that there are enough men out there so desperate for first blood that they will pay close to $4 Million for the privilege. What’s with the male head, the bigger one, that drives us to such stupidity? Guaranteed, she will just lay there, thinking of the money she has collected. With no real sexual experience, what else could she really do? And why doesn’t she have sexual experience at 22 years-old? We are talking a late bloomer here. In this world.

I have to hand it to this woman. Not for keeping her legs closed for 22 years. But for the idea. It is a fantastic idea. Hell, for that kind of money she doesn’t even have to work at all. Provided she doesn’t give her three mil and change to Bernie Madoff. Maybe Madoff should fork over for her. He has screwed so many people, he might as well pay out for a change and give her a whirl. Give him something to do while under house arrest.

All jokes aside, chances are it will be an elderly businessman who wins the bid. If the young woman is smart she will do the video cam on the Internet and sell admission. There’s a few more bucks in that, for sure. And, besides, you get to memorialize the big debut. A little music, “We’ve Only Just Begun,” or some other treacly nonsense, and you can package it as a DVD and sell it off the website.

So in the end, he gets the cherry, she gets the bread. Hey, there is a first time for everything.

Pitfalls of a Branded Economic Culture

Brand names have always been important. For years, a good brand can mean everything from quality and reliability to status and social cache. But in the last twenty five years or so brand names have evolved into “branding” as a cultural and marketing phenomenon. Without proper branding, products and services can either fall by the wayside or play second fiddle to those that have been served up to consumers and businesses with the proper branding identification.

We have become dependent upon branding. Without it, it would appear, few consumers could judge the quality of a product on its own merits. Without branding we lack the know how to determine how one product may differ from another in the way it is made, crafted, or serviced. We can’t really ascertain how it performs, whether in the laundry cycle or on the road. Despite the Internet and all the information sources we have available, there are relatively few places the average consumer can educate himself on the true character and craftsmanship of any given product. We know little about the skill it takes to make something just so, the materials used and how they are superior from the knock off varieties.

So we brand products and services and generate enough marketing that consumers believe either the truth or the hype, depending on the goods. The branding culture has had a tremendous effect on consumer habits and they way they shop. Our economy is based largely on consumerism, and the perception of someone’s wealth and position in society is what drives much of our economy. The lines of demarcation is such that without wearing, using or somehow adhering to the socially approved brands, you are considered a lesser person with no taste, no wealth and hardly any social distinction. Some people really don’t care about all that, but most do.

This kind of mindset certainly has its conveniences. You really don’t have to think much about what you are buying in order to cater to your own self-perceptions. You don’t have to know much about the product itself, but just the product elevates you to a certain social category. No matter that the product is actual quality in terms of construction ad design, the fact that it is perceived as such is all most consumers really need to make their shopping day.

To build their client bases, retail outlets especially rely on stocking branded products. You must cater to your targeted clientele. If you stock this product you are considered a lower level, big box type of retailer. If you stock that brand, then you are the mid-line, department store type of retailer. And at the upper echelon, you must stock the brands that cause shoppers to perceive you as exclusive. Coupled with the design of your venue and its geographic location, shoppers know you are ready to service their kind of folk.

But with the economic downturn, branding may have backfired. With reports of store closings, maybe 70 odd thousand retail outlets across the country, it is becoming abundantly clear that no one really needs all these venues. Surely, the economic dowturn is the largest factor, but perhaps this financial crisis has shed light on a problem that has existed for quite some time. Simply put, no matter where you go, you are finding the same merchandise in every place you shop. One store has no distinction from another. It is all the same stuff.
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You can go to any city on the planet and, largely, it is all the same stuff. It may vary from one venue to the other, but each venue offers the same merchandise on its social and economic level as the one you found the the last city you visited. In fact, you might be shopping in the same chain, buying the same stuff. Only the city you shop in is different.

So if everyone has the same offerings, small wonder retailers are going out of business, left and right. Small wonder consumers are reluctant to buy anything. Not only are they short of cash and credit, but they already have a half dozen of whatever it is being offered in any outlet at any given time. I hear friends tell me, “who needs it? I already have plenty of those.”

In a nation that prides itself in originality, there are few places carrying original goods. Perhaps it is time to see more retail outlets offering smaller batches of merchandise from original designers and suppliers. I realize there are economies of scale, but with staples there are alternate solutions to overcoming the challenges of economy of scale. It would be nice for a change to not see everyone wearing the same thing or finding in a house the same layout as the last house. With some merchandise, pots and pans, for example, sure it will be the same. But furniture?

Perhaps we need a more educated consumer. Pundits claim we are educated through the Internet, but do we really know the difference in woods in furniture, the types of finish, the distinctions in quality? Having watched shoppers in furniture stories, I would think not. In fact, the level of ignorance about the goods we are laying out money for is fairly astounding.

Maybe one way to stimulate this economy is to be a little more original. To understand quality and craftsmanship and realize the best things are built to last. Use them, wear them and allow them to take on the vintage textures of an original creation. Don’t buy junk, because it has a label you can recognize.

Of course the original designers in time may become popular. Once they do they will scale up production as people rush to buy their goods. They will buy blindly, with great faith it will boost their status in the eyes of others. And then these original products will become so popular we will have…branding. Oh, well.

Real Experts and Phony Experts. In the Media, It’s Hard to Tell

There is an old saying about people believing what they read in print. With so many people blogging on the Internet and selling self-published books and periodicals, there is a surfeit of information. But the fact that there is a lot of information doesn’t make most of it particularly accurate or authentic. Websites like Snopes.com is forever confirming of invalidating alleged articles, facts, studies, whatever. Nevertheless, specious information still gets out there, and people take it as truth.

For instance, Martin Eisenstadt, a self-proclaimed senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy declared that former Vice Presidential Candidate and current Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, did not know Africa was a continent. People believed it. News outlets carried the story. It came from an authority, after all, an expert source. The only problem was there is no actual Martin Eisenstadt, and the Harding Institute only exists as a website domain. In short, it was a hoax. But people still believe that Sarah Palin does not know that Alaska is a continent.

Now Sarah Palin may believe a lot of things we may view with concern. Believingshe has valid foreign policy expertise because she can see Russia from her window or wherever, does not make for credibility. And her alleged adherence to the theory that humans co-existted with dinosaurs some 6,500 years ago, makes here more of a candidate for Alley Oop than a Vice President of the United States.

But she is not the only spurious story. There is the Obama missive about his being raised a Muslim. There is the story that Bill Gates is giving away money for passing along a chain letter. There is no end to the nonsense people will buy. There is no end to the rumors people will spread.

In a democracy everyone is entitlted to their opinion. What becomes quesitonable is the steadfast belief in far too many that every opinion should carry equal weight. This I’m afraid is more of a product of a dumbed down culture than it is a model of democracy. It is far better that those who have actual background experience, knowledge of the subject, be accorded greater credibility than those who don’t. Even then there is a chance the experts will get it wrong, but they will be less apt to float out some crackpot theory on the Internet in hopes that by virtue of spreading it will carry some authenticity.

Inexpensive, http://www.jealt.mx/construccion.html levitra 10 mg drug can be bought from any internet or local pharmacy at discounted prices. But about 400 men in every 100,000 suffer from the most common viagra online mastercard sexual disease known as erectile dysfunction. So don’t waste any more time and cheap brand levitra start to work faster than Kamagra tablets would. One important thing is don’t use this medicine more than once per day. buy cialis canadian can help you have an erection when there is a foreplay. The fact is we have so diluted our pool of experts we can’t tell the real ones from the phonies. Worse, perhaps, we can’t distinguish the real experts from the pundits who parrot a lot of garbage under the guise their mediocre thinking has substance. In all, there is so much information, the chronically uninformed do not become informed. Instead they become confused as they are unable to discern truth from fiction, or at least intelligent conjecture from abject idiocy.

If you are looking for proof, look to the news media. Every now and then you get someone who actually knows what he is talking about. The rest of the time we get pundits who are posing as experts in order to make a living. Most of the time they will write a book, which is really a few paragraphs expanded into a volume. This is called expertise. And you wonder why the literacy rate is somewhere near a third world country. You wonder why the economy has been run into the ground. Well, surely, there are legions on the media who will wax considrably as to why it all happened. But they will never get to the point.

For one thing they are incapable of getting to the point. Reference points are limited and insight is myopic. It is like finding the cure for a disease rather than developing drugs that will just pay for the maintenance of a disease. Once you get to the point you really have nothing more to say. Your story is over. You can no longer milk it. You have killed the proverbial goose that is laying those golden eggs.

So rather than reach a conclusion or make a solid point, we manufacture new experts. We don’t manufacture much anymore in this country, but we produce our experts by the dozen. And what do they have to say? Too often they have as much to say as the mythical Martin Eisenstadt. Eisenstadt at least knew he was a joke. Can’t say the same for the majority.

Between the rumors, the legends, the emails and the expert insights we find on the media, we can surmise that there is not that much to learn from them. At the end of the day it is up to you to educate yourself and go by your gut. Bear in mind that educated gut is a lot more rewarding in its results than just gut without education.

It is a tough economy in a hard world. To be armed is to keep learning. Learning means reading source material as well as the opinions. It is difficult to find the time. But spending this life and all eternity in confusion is not an attractive alternative. Unless you don’t care where your information comes from and how accurate it is. Just keep your chain mail to yourself.

Sex and the Christmas Season

Nobody likes to be alone. At least most people don’t like being alone. Especially over the Holiday Season. Even more especially during over the Holiday Season during a rotten economy. Because there is nothing like the Holiday Season to make your being alone feel really, truly lonely.

It’s shopping alone for gifts for friends and family but not for a special lover or significant other. It’s tough knowing that families are coming together, lovers coming together, and you are either going alone to Holiday OParties, seeing the family, or watching TV with a quart of seasonal egg nog that you can only share with your cat.

Small wonder that during the holiday season sex becomes a major factor. Reports and studies will tell you so. Single folk have the wandering eye. People feel romantic, want to be intimate. With someone. Even, at times, if it is wrong. The alcohol ingested during the holiday seaon only serves to fan those flames. Normal restraint can go by the wayside. If nothing else, hot sex on a cold night is one of the better ways to pass the time.

I wrote some years back about how I noticed women in particular look at you differently during the holiday season. There is that certain glint in their eyes. They flirt both subtly and overtly. You are a prospect, and the holiday season can be overwhelming. All that sentiment, so much nostalgia floating about, it is small wonder people are looking for a date, someone to do something with.

And then I suppose there is the consideration of family life. Most of us are around families, sometimes more than we care to be. But we are there nevertheless. In an economic downturn it is, for better or for worse, one of the constants, the sense of intimacy and understanding, coupled of course with the usual neuroses and jealousies. We start think about perpetuating that famiily life. Which means having kids of our own. Which means having sex. What better way to have sex than for a worthy cause, the perpetuationof life as we know it.
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So here we are in the midst of another holiday season. A good many of us don’t have the bucks to go anywhere, so we are stuck in our very own version of reality. We are up to here in snow in a particularly cold season. Even the west coast is experiencing a chill. That is a chill for the west coast. So there isn’t much of an escape. Even our shopping this year is probably limited. Gifts? don’t expect many. Still, we must do what we must.

Well, not all that long ago in this country, most people didn’t visit St. Bart’s for holiday vacation. They didn’t go much of anywhere. They stayed where they were, hung out with friends and family. Went to parties. They had a few drinks, and they had sex.

Well here we are back to go in some ways. We are a different country, but we are facing economic restrictions. We can be drinking at parties, but we are a much more sober country. So much for having a field day on our credit cards or home equity loans.

But we can still get together. We can still couple. We can still have sex. It’s free. Well, most of the time.