shopping – Page 3 – Hopeful Romantics

When Unemployment Makes You Goofy

These are tough times. These are tough times globally, but for the United States this is also no day a the beach. These are tough times economically, what with personal wealth devastated by the real estate market, the depletion of pensions funds. Money is scarce and credit is tight.

What money there is in the banks and among the fat cats is being horded. The government seems weak and ineffective in forcing the banks to literally get off a dime. While the media shifts back and forth, trumpeting contradictory statistics, supposed financial and industrial experts inveigh equally conflicting predictions about the the economic recovery. The more honest of the pundits, after hemming and hawing on air time, in order to collect their money or sell their book, finally admit, “hell, I don’t know.”

Whether there will be an economic recovery or where there will be a double dip, where the economy drops, recovers and then drops again like some erratic roller coaster ride, it all remains to be seen. Meanwhile, people need to find work. They need to make bucks just to survive or in the luckier cases supplement their diminished savings, before it leaves them looking like bit players in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

So where do you find work when there is not work? Good question. Where do you find work when a great many jobs have either been rendered obsolete or have been outsourced to another country? Simply. Why you go to Disneyland, of course.

If not Disneyland, then you attend the job fairs at any one of the amusement parks and destination sites where people with a couple of bucks left still take their families. According to an article in The Los Angeles Times, amusement park job fairs are enjoying, if that’s the word, record turnouts. It’s not just kids anymore, recent high school and college graduates looking for a summer job or something to do until they can find something else, that are attending the job fairs. Be it the Disney Parks, Knotts Berry Farm, Six Flags, Universal Studios, or Hoolah’s Tuba Land, job candidates from every background and of every description are lining up and looking for work.

At a recent job fair at Six Flags Magic Mountain, in Valencia, California, more than 1,600 applicants stood in line in search of work. Another 1,100 attended the job fair at Universal Studios, Hollywood. Those who attended were mortgage agents and sales clerks. These are teachers and construction workers, forklift operators. These are office managers and restaurant managers, loan processors and once-retired seniors who thought they had enough to retire until the economic meltdown and the loss to their portfolio and pensions made them think again.

These are people looking to work for less than $400 a week. To be Goofy in an amusement park. In this day and age, $400 a week is a long way from big money. It is a long way from what most of us deem “a living.” It is the kind of salary that makes you feel impotent and humiliated, that assures your purchases will be largely guided by what is being featured at the Dollar Store. It is the kind of money that allows you to believe at least you are doing something to tide you over and feed your family, until something better comes along. And then, if nothing better does come along, it is the kind of money that reminds you at the end of every week there is probably no way out.

In short, we have not only ruined an economy. We have damaged its people. Through greed, unnecessary risk, and blatant audacity we have all but bankrupted a country. We have caused such grievous harm to ourselves, and yet we wonder why there are so many among us who become Tea Baggers or whatever, to vent their anger. No matter how misdirected we believe the anger may be, there is no denying people have the right to be extremely pissed off.

We have allowed the few, the venal, and the undisciplined to not only steal away our money but steal away our future as well. For this they are rewarded. For this, we make excuses and mumble something about our institutions being too big to fail and then pray that people will be distracted by one more stupid romance, an athlete gone awry, or a prefabricated news event. We hope that the distractions will prevent the anger from escalating into more tangible manifestations, other than parading around with misspelled signs.

Some claim this is the Great Recession and second only to our Great Depression. While much of it may be true, I also beg to differ. When the Great Depression ended, American people had jobs to which they could return. We had our industries intact. There wasn’t talk of technical innovations and alternate fuel sources creating new jobs, while our present industries were demoted to the trash heaps or shipped offshore. We didn’t have a situation where the greatest concern was the bottom line, to the point where industries were downsized and American workers deemed obsolete by virtue of their professions and job descriptions.
It levitra generic cheap works to restore the cortisol level in body to reduce the effect of stress and prevent post workout slumps on body. Diabetes MellitusImpotence is caused when the blood vessels or connective tissue in the surrounding region of penis are the major victims of this sort generic cialis price of gout. After a stressful time that you had in your office, it is certain that you look forward to have a relaxing time at home but somewhere your partner might be expecting more than the word beyond relaxing. cheap super cialis Generally speaking, men will bulk buy viagra be mature at the age of twenties.
When we recovered from the Great Depression, there was industry and with the industry there were jobs. And from the jobs came money, and with the money people were able to buy what they needed. But after the Great Recession, many jobs are gone and will never return to these shores. These were jobs were people worked, made their livings, had their dignity. But not now.

If there are no jobs, then where do people come up with the money to buy what they need? How do they send their kids to school? How do they enjoy the brief time they have on Earth? Certainly those who used Tarp money to consolidate their own businesses and award themselves bonuses haven’t given it much consideration. Clearly, from the way they ran this country into the ground, they are not prone to think that far in advance.

In short, we may have demoted ourselves to a second tier nation. We have former industrial workers now performing menial service tasks in rusted and blighted cities. We have journalists out of work, news sources collapsing around us. Small businesses are in jeopardy and have no credit sources. We have collapsing infrastructures and a public education system that does anything but make our kids competitive in the global economy.

I know, I hear others say, “well hey compared to other countries around the world, we are still doing pretty well.” This is sophistry. We have been reduced as a nation to comparing ourselves to less fortunate nations, developing nations, so that we can somehow feel better about our own condition. It is no longer a nation where we are looking toward a brighter future, except for maybe in television commercials and in the rhetoric of politicians. Never mind that our condition stinks, and as adults we are looking for jobs in a theme park. We should take refuge in the fact our long term outlook isn’t quite as dismal as that of some other country.

In an oblique way, it may be a good thing millions of us are on Prozac or some other antidepressant. If not, then the wacky outbursts we are seeing in the news with increasing frequency may turn into ever more violent wacky outbursts. The pissed off may become more organized and encourage true public disobedience. The Tea Baggers in true American tradition may put down those misspelled signs, grab a little tar and feathers, and start hoisting the bonus babies on rails. Out of work intellectuals could join them, along with the downsized and disenfranchised and the permanently neglected.

I am not saying this should happen. There are better ways to address our problems and to solve the present and future crises. But when the political body proves unresponsive, and when people feel they are being overtaxed and without representation, true representation, legislators concerned with the public interest and not lining their own pockets, then history dictates that things can get out of hand. History is indeed in this way a cruel teacher. History is an even harsher teacher when its lessons are ignored.

I don’t believe we are in anyway near the breaking point, reaching critical mass, if you will, where the people start acting up and the Shays Rebellion and the Boston Tea Party start looking like good ideas. I think we are a country too smart to tear itself entirely apart, having learned that lesson 150 years ago in our previous debacle known as The Civil War. But life is full of surprises, and with the advent of modern media and technology, news travels fast if not all that accurately.

But let’s face it. Unemployed people need something to do. If you are an adult and working a menial job for $400 a week, then the magic is gone from our magic mountain.

Hang High the White Collar Criminals

People are pissed off. This in itself is no real news as the public disgust with the news media, politicians and Wall Street has been on the increase every year. But now they are really pissed off. People are so angry that not even their Prozac and Zoloft, and the other mood enhancers, can fend off the seething desire to retaliate against the charlatans they believe have done them wrong.

People want justice. They have lost their savings, and they have lost their jobs. They have seen their pensions cut in half. Their houses, if not foreclosed upon are underwater. What equity they had is gone. They have been lied to, bamboozled, and moved around by the sound byte media and the sound bitten politicians. The had put their faith in their civil and social leaders, their financial advisers, and they have been led astray. The economy has become a fiasco and the state of the nation is regarded as but one more news event to be commented on by the spurious and insipid who through media magic have been qualified as experts. A reinvigorated Wall Streets continues its efforts to make a buck off the public’s ignorance and apathy.

But people are pissed off. Certainly, some of the responsibility for this national debacle must fall upon their shoulders. For it is the public that overbought and extended itself. It is the semi-literate public who disregarded the large print, yet alone the fine print, on its mortgage contracts, never bothering to ask why am I paying so little for a house that is worth so much? Instead, they bought into the snake oil sales pitch that they should overlook the balloon payment due in a few years, as they will always be able to get another mortgage. And the real estate con artists most used phrase, ” housing prices will always go up,” resonated with millions, much like we take comfort in our being watched over by angels, or global warming will be corrected by forces other than ourselves.

We are a nation that doesn’t read too well. Forget about the languages of other nations. Approximately half of us our functionally illiterate with our own language, and that’s when we bother to read. Much of our more significant correspondence has been truncated down to pithy little phrases that hinder the scope of any detailed thought or definition. We utter sound bytes that are fed to us and believe wholeheartedly that this is original thought. Anything more than a few sentences to a paragraph forces us to give up what little element of concentration we still possess. And critical thinking, true critical thinking, is far too demanding to warrant our attention.

So, in short, our ignorance and laziness can turn us into victims. We are easily bamboozled. We take lies as truth on face value, as long as those lies come from our own segment of social and political belief. We give more credence to our celebrities and are suspicious of our scientists. A crackpot with a theory gets more attention than the knowledgeable with the facts. Especially if the fact is bad news.

We believe for some reason that we have the inherent right to be safe and free of any slights or contrary opinions or perspectives that would make us uncomfortable. We think of our children of geniuses in the making and believe they will prevail and prosper by virtue of their American heritage and their legacy of a two car garage. We believe we can buy anything and pay for it later. We take out home equity loans on our houses with inflated values and then use that money for trinkets and beads and other crap we don’t really need. We buy boats and overpriced designer clothing. We buy gourmet foods for our pets and dress our four-year-old’s in $300.00 blue jeans.

Instead of being a producer nation, we are a consumer nation. Two-thirds of our economy is based in consumerism. It is a hell of a lifestyle, and to support it we borrow money from foreign countries, borrow against our house, our credit cards, and, lately, we melt down our own crappy old jewelry and sell it off for its weight in gold. We do this for one of two reasons. We are either in love with ourselves; we are special people who absolutely deserve to garner all the material offerings that the world can provide. Or we hate ourselves, have the kind of esteem issues that compel us to buy these baubles and trinkets so that we can feel better about ourselves. Feel that we measure up to the people next door.

In short, we have set ourselves up as suckers. We are ripe for the plucking. We are semi-literate, prescription drug indulged individuals who worship celebrity while eschewing any kind of critical or cognitive thinking in favor of our own distorted view of the world. We are the perfect mark for any group of slippery sliders wishing to sell us a bill of goods. And that they did. Our government gave Wall Street a license to steal. And that is what they did.

First came the panic. We were on the verge of a depression. Enter the federal government as those surviving companies, paragons of what is loosely labeled free enterprise and free market conditions, took bailout money by the trillions to shore up their companies. Those those that took the bailout money, or stimulus money, were supposed to use it wisely. Stimulate the economy. Pass it from Wall Street to Main Street. It didn’t happen. Instead the money was used for consolidation, for shoring up financial institutes and for buying companies that should have been left to die. A trillion bucks later, and unemployment remains high, businesses are closing, and there are millions of foreclosures.

There is constant talk that America is in the economic downturn from which it may never recover.. We have stopped our buying, most of us anyway. Suddenly, we realize we really don’t need those extra trinkets and beads and that Fluffy the Cat doesn’t need gourmet food that children in a developing nation would kill for. Little Child can make do in a $50 pair of Levi’s, in fact it is chic again, and the two luxury vehicles in the driveway, the $20 thousand dollar vacation, the caviar and custom made $500 shirts, the ski mobiles and snow mobiles and the RV that drags them to places where we can overrun the landscape may not have the cachet they once did.

Then came the anger. We are trying to save our money. We are watching every buck. We are eating in and ordering movies with a couple of pizzas for our rich and robust entertainment on a Saturday night. We have no credit left, so cash is king. We try to make the best of a bad situation, knowing that we were left stranded by political and financial chicanery and that the vaunted promise of change is like other campaign promises, fading in the light of a harsh reality. We are tightening our belts and punching new holes in the leather, because we can’t afford to buy another belt.

And we are very pissed off. In response to our anger we have voiced our concern by claiming we are lapsing into Socialism though few really know much about that economic system and what it really means. We make noises about a free market, but corporate welfare leaves the rest of us struggling. We become tea baggers and in tepid attempt to express ourselves conduct insipid reenactments of the more stalwart at the Boston Tea Party by flinging our Lipton’s into the rivers and lakes. We are angry and it is vented in misguided ways with little direction that will promise little results.

We are frustrated and we have few channels for its expression. In the past couple of decades we have been indoctrinated with the belief that anger and frustration are by their nature bad things and shouldn’t be expressed in polite society. As colonialists in our nascent stages and in quest of our independence we dragged our scalawags into the streets where they were summarily tarred and feathered. Now we just whine at them. We are admonished that we shouldn’t act out, that we shouldn’t raise our voices, that we shouldn’t complain. So when we do act out and raise our voices, we do so with meaningless displays. We wear our guns to a healthcare meeting and consider this a show of resistance.

We immerse ourselves in nonsense. We conduct meaningless debates that are exploited by the media and the interest groups who manipulate our deeper emotions. We are turned against each other over petty discord, and we allow our prejudices to condemn us to the kind of narrow thinking that obfuscates the real demons among us. It is in the best interests of the special interests that we continue this nonsensical rancor, allowing time for the real criminals to continue to rob us blind.

Ambulatory care consideration alludes to an extensive variety of tree grown foods flavors permit you to pick the relevant herbal of your problem. http://seanamic.com/umbilicals-international-opens-its-doors-in-rosyth/ order generic levitra Many herbs for men’s sexual purchase cialis online health are available on the market to help improve one’s sex life. Rich in zinc and containing rare amino acid, this seafood not only tastes good but also works well on treating prostatitis without an infection. tadalafil cipla buy cialis generic The elevated moods are clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania. Our anger is very real, but misdirected. The feeling is righteous enough, but its expression lacks currency. The angrier we get, either the more we try to hide it, or the more confused we become. We don’t know which way to turn and any moral or ethical compass that is supposed to give us direction has been co-opted by corporate sponsor and their political toadies that direct us to their own best interests and not our own.

We are a nation that believes in justice. We are a nation that believes in accountability. At least we used to. We believe someone should be responsible for transgressions against society. We went to war and fought the Nazis, then conducted the Nuremberg Trials to show that leaders must be accountable for their actions. At Nuremberg, we listened to one Nazi after the next claim they were only following orders. And then we hanged the bastards. We hanged them high.

But no more. Our leaders are anything but accountable. They screw up and get promoted. They run their companies into the ground and they get bonuses for their efforts. They break the law and rob and steal, and receive bail out money from the government, which is best described as public money misused and misdirected. We bail them out and absorb the disaster, and they pat themselves on the back. The New York Times just announced that Wall Street is preparing to give itself even more bonuses, after taking government money for bailing out of a debacle they created and then leaving us in the lurch. Who could be more deserving of a hefty reward than a collective bunch of failures?

There has been predatory mortgage lending, falsification of documents, and the fraudulent act of according toxic financial packages mythical value. There was insider trading and the illegal shuffling of money. There were crimes committed. And yet the government in its implacable wisdom has deemed it fit not to investigate or prosecute any financial wrongdoings. While it has been broadly acknowledged that a fair portion of the financial dealings were indeed criminal acts the government while wrangling over partisan politics can not be bothered bring these white collar criminals to justice. Sure, they brought Bernard Madoff to justice, ad a few others, but their few billions in stolen funds are mere drops in the bigger bucket, compared to the trillions stolen by others.

We are not accountable. We do not suffer consequence for our actions. We allow criminals who screw up royally and drive this country into the ground to walk off with the the spoils of their ill gotten gains. We endure one of our few remaining industries were the media discusses the crimes ad nauseum, and books are written. But no one stands accountable and no one goes to jail. Remarkable.

I realize that out of the thousands of people in the financial sector, Wall Street, if you prefer, only a portion committed criminal acts. The rest merely climbed in on a rare opportunity, universal deregulation, perpetrated for the past twenty years by idiots in government who failed to see the catastrophe the end game would bring. But then, among the high paid toadies there are the criminals, the ones who robbed this country blind. These are people with no conscience that raided pension funds and pillaged the economy worse than any group of gangsters. While we arrest a couple of grocery store robbing fools and put them in jail with vapid pronouncements that we are fighting crime, we allow the true criminals, the ones that took our retirement money and the futures of the children to live in luxury.

This is what we are pissed off about. Underneath the spurious nonsense about Socialism and the loss of our old America, we are seething that everything we believed in has been delivered as one big lie. We are enraged that all those Western Movies, Cop Movies, where the good guys defy the odds to bring the bad guys to justice is just a lot of crap. Because we have not just been robbed of our money. We have been robbed of our culture and our sense of justice and fair play for all.

Had either this administration, the past one possessed half the insight it claims it has, then they would prosecute these white collar criminals. They would bring them to justice. We would take back the money they stole and give them long and harsh prison sentences. We would make examples of them by making it more costly to commit the crime than to endure the moderate penalty that, if ever, are now being handed out. We would hang them high.

Making white collar criminals accountable would promote the true healing of this country. Here is where at least partisan populist cultures can converge in rare mutual agreement. This would ease the anger and the pain. This would give us justice. And justice is what we deserve.

Advent of the Electric Car Means Luxury Cars for the Poor

The Age of Steam is upon us. Or, in this case, as we are several generations removed from the Age of Steam, we are adapting to the age of alternative energy. Alternative Energy is in itself a funny name, as energy is energy, so an alternate energy source is just a difference source than the fossil fuels we have been using for several centuries to foul up the planet.

Or, more to the point, some of these energy forms we have been using for quite some time. Coal has been with us for centuries. We have stories written about the people who have extracted it from the earth. Stories about the people who delivered it to houses. We have stories about the people who work with it, suffer illness from it, and die from its dreaded black lung disease. We hear tales of horror about going into the bowels of the earth and the mine shaft collapses, both newsworthy and legendary. We hear about perhaps even the greater horrors of strip mining and what it does to the community and general environment. We hear about clean coal, and the rebuttals there will never be any such thing as clean coal.

Coal drives machinery and begets our electricity. So does oil energy, nuclear and solar. No matter what source we utilize, it gets down to one or two things, driving our machinery and providing electricity. Our industrial machinery relies on these sources of energy. Some machinery requires the conversion from the energy sources into electricity, and others do not. The automobile is one of them. The automobile depends on the combustible engine, which is set off by tiny explosions initiated by gasoline or some other fossil fuel. That is the way it has been for nearly a century. First steam and then the internal combustible engine, functioning on diesel or gasoline.

Until now. With the world well aware that oil won’t be around forever, we have been searching for new sources to fuel our vehicles. There are rumors and then there is the reality. In the rumors, we have hydrogen powered cars and solar powered cars. Maybe. But not at the moment. What we do have are hybrid, part gasoline, part electric cars, and, finally, all electric cars.

Despite the pitfalls of short ranges and the need to find an electrical outlet, the electric car is upon us. Much as the Age of Steam was once upon us, the electric car is greeted with mixtures of wonder and skepticism. These two sentiments rest at the heart of our true diversity. We are naturally skeptical, and we are naturally in wonder. We live in awe of new achievements, technological breakthroughs, but we also revel in their subsequent failures. We either choose sides and split up the responsibility for uttering either sentiment, or we fall back into our time honored position of wait and see. Right now probably more people are waiting and seeing than pushing the pros and cons of electric powered transportation.

Nevertheless, it is here. The recent Los Angeles Car Show featured a variety of electric cars. Other, gas powered vehicles garnered not even half the excitement as the new offerings of electric cars. Damn near every car manufacturer stepped up to the plate, showcasing either its production model or prototype. It is here, and despite our concerns, we secretly can’t wait to embrace it.

Of course life will be different. With the economy in the dumper and the cost of gasoline bound to increase in the forthcoming years, a little fuel economy never hurt anyone. Electric powered vehicles offer just that. Also, electric cars can be fast, as in very, very fast. There is on reconstituted, electric powered old Datsun Sedan that is breaking quarter mile speed records at the local drag strips. They are fast, and they are cheap to fuel. They may lack the range, making longer trips a little difficult at the moment, but over time that concern with be a thing of the past.

Of course, electric cars don’t make the sexy sounds of the old V-8’s. No throaty, ass gripping roar as the engine accelerates. The quiet electric motor may lack something in the sex factor. As a matter of fact the sex factor may lack something as well. So far we have no reports of couples doing it in an electric car. No humming engines on Lover’s Lane. Singles don’t get hot over the new lack of throbbing engine. Hey, but throw in a few accessories, perhaps some truly futuristic accouterments, and having sex in an electric car will someday be downright sexy.

Okay, so with the price of fuel going sky high and the electric car the poster child of the car shows, what’s to become of the plain old internal combustion luxury roadsters we know and love? I live in Los Angeles where the love and reverence for the luxury car takes on religious dimensions. A perfunctory observation of the boulevards and parking lots would tell even the densest of individuals that you are nothing here if you can’t plod through bumper to bumper traffic in a 200 mile per hour Ferrari or Maserati. Or if you are too cheap to lay out the necessary $300,000 or more, the very least you can do is a Turbo Porsche or Aston Martin.
Potent herbs in this herbal pill improve blood uk viagra prices circulation. It assures safe cure from viagra pharmacy prices health issues like impotence. Directed by Tom Bezucha, filming the adaptation of the comedy novel ‘Headhunters’ has experienced fits and starts for more than a year prior to delivery) Pregnancy (diagnosis and prescriptions during pregnancy or 40 weeks ahead of delivery date) Postpartum (diagnosis and prescriptions one year after delivery) The researchers made the following observations: Exposure to peripartum oxytocin increased the risk of depression or anxiety in the first postpartum year by approximately 32. midwayfire.com overnight generic cialis The other genric version of the medicine and the taking procedure of the commander viagra medicine is always the most preferred product as there are so many of us hesitate at the prospect of reaching any of these goals through cosmetic surgery.
If you are a paltry piker living from paycheck to paycheck than you should simply make do with a Lexus, BMW or Mercedes Benz. If not the top of the line, then at least an entry level or middle of the line model. Lest you disgrace yourself with anything that would appear unseemly and out of touch in an image minded status seeking society that has as its epicenter the City of the Angels.

And while Los Angeles is the epicenter for status seeking car culture, the rest of the nation, despite its protests of humility and self-denial, is not all that far behind. Not really. Look at the recent real estate boom, or the more recent real estate illusion, where millions of people took out equity loans on their overpriced homes to buy among other trinkets and beads a luxury automobile. Because if you can’t live in luxury for that ten minute trip to the market, what is life, after all?

But now, after all the years of scratching and stretching for that luxury automobile, we find ourselves in a proverbial quandary. There is the slow dawning that the sleek Italian or German, maybe even Japanese piece of machinery in the driveway will soon be diminished in status and value. The electric car is here, and it is the next big thing. Even if it is a modest Chevy Volt it may have more cachet than that lumbering Lexus some stranger must have left in your driveway. I mean, with everyone going electric, what is a person to do? When you can buy a sleek and sophisticated all electric 200 MPH Tesla to drive in bumper to bumper traffic what are you doing with that gas guzzling Neanderthal of another technological era?

Well, if you are a righteous, environmentally concerned individual, you would be giving away that smoking, belching dinosaur. You wouldn’t be caught dead in it, not when you could be ensconced in the vanguard of the 21st century. Let’s e objective. It’s time to go electric. So what to do with that suddenly out of fashion internal combustion vehicle?

Why you give it to the poor. That’s right. Sign over that pink slip to some non-profit organization and hand the keys to a member of the underclass. Let them experience luxury driving for a few brief moments before the polar caps melt and global warming floods the streets, making the Hummer the only drivable vehicle. Let the poor souls who are out of work or barely working, surviving grimly in this economic downturn, take a brief spin in an historical landmark of automotive engineering. It’s only fair.

It’s a win-win situation. The poor have a brief shot at luxury living, and you can feel good about brightening up their lives. You also get rid of this inconvenient truth of a luxury albatross that is so diminished in value it is hardly worth the paint that covers its metal. As for its value in status and image, you are driving the equivalent of a Nehru Jacket.

So let the poor have all those luxury cars. A few smiles, before the last hurrah. All those streamlined super designed German and Italian vehicles will brighten up those seedy neighborhoods. Add a shabby chic sensibility to the dilapidation and graffiti overload.

Some may caution with the price of gasoline ever on the increase it would burden the poor. They would have these beautiful cars but not the money to pay for the fuel that would power them. Not to worry. The poor are poor, remember. They are not going anywhere, anyway.

When Sex Goes to the Dogs

Let me begin by saying I enjoy having pets. Pets are great companions, and they give you unqualified love in return for very little. To be the object of adoration, you just need to pet them, feed, them, change their cages or little boxes every now and then, and take them for a walk. Pets are healthy for our spirit and made even add years to our life. And when their life ends, it leaves us wanting and missing them.

I have had at one time or another, either because of children or on my own, a pretty rich assortment of pets. I have had a couple birds, a frog, an Iguana, enough turtles and fish to populate a small lake, the brief stint with a cat left by a runaway neighbor, and at least a half dozen dogs. All things considered, I prefer the dogs.

I have loved my dogs, some more than others. I grew up with a dog loving parent who kept Dog World Magazine in the bathroom for comfort reading. I went to dog shows and probably knew more types of breeds at nine years old than most adults.

I have experienced the terrible moment when you have to put them down. I have taken them with me on long trips and spent time walking them and doing all the things dogs love to do. The thing is, no matter how much I have enjoyed my dogs, or other pets, I realize they are not people. Dogs are much simpler, but still require much attention. People are far more complex and tougher to deal with. Some animal lovers deal well with animals, but have it rough when dealing with relationships, no matter how casual.

Lately, I have noticed more people are pet centric and less people centric. They adore their pets, bestow on them the affections and attention folks don’t seem to be getting elsewhere. Pets are not only pets but objects of transferal. They lavish the kind of love and attention on them they have normally reserved for close friends, family and the people with whom they engage in romantic relationships.

What used to be reserved for people love and romance, those with whom we have sex, share histories and develop relationships, we give to the dogs. Perhaps it is the economy and daunting times that people need so much reassurance without complications. Perhaps it is life and all its disappointments and knowing that tail wagging fur ball loves and accepts you know matter what. Perhaps we are experiencing levels of arrested development and any relationship more complex than that with the pet or a twenty minute reality show is far too daunting for our childlike sensibilities.

I would like to think this perception applies largely to aging Gen Y people or Boomers. Here it is somewhat understandable. Whether for good or bad a lot of Boomers, especially, for reasons unknown to me, are winding it down and resting on what they mistakenly consider their laurels. They have been hurt in love, carry enough baggage to settle in Paraguay, and are too set in their ways to adjust to another human brain pan. Besides, as they are climbing in the years, romance is scarce, sex for a good many is near nonexistent, and there isn’t a whole lot going on, anyway.

For those who were married with children, the kids are out of the house and are soliciting not desiring your advice and counsel. The children are no longer dependent and will rarely show up for the holidays yet alone paddle every night up to their food dish, do a little begging or lick your hand. Or give you the dog breath kisses so many seem to adore and even boast about on Facebook. Notice in Facebook all the people who instead of themselves post photos of their dogs. Subliminal desires?

So to put it bluntly, the kids are ungrateful little assholes that can barely remember to buy you a birthday card. The dog is nothing but an everlasting expression of gratitude. Your kids will barely let you touch them. The dog will curl up in your lap and in your bed. When was the last time your teenage or older kid with lie in bed with you as a gesture of affection. You would have to be sick and dying, or close to it, before most of you would see that day again. As for those who don’t have and never had children, will then the dog is a definite convenience. No nasty sex with strangers, in vitro sessions, or adoption overtures. Just a trip the the pound or a few hundred bucks if you are determined to acquire pedigree.

I see a great many women I know, and some men. I watch them thrust their affections on their four legged lovers. They hug them, kiss them, buy them gourmet food and cute little dog clothes that have the kind of price tags animal rescue groups would covet as a generous donation. They talk baby talk, and if there is a prospect of a relationship, the dog comes first. Maybe it is smart, and maybe it is just another rationale for a missed opportunity.

But that is not the only place the pet fetish has fully taken hold. Blame it on the lousy economy, maybe, but more and more younger people are not only acquiring dogs but taking them wherever they go. Living in a high rise building I can see the increase in dog ownership. I can also smell it in the elevators or see the little urine trails the overanxious canines leave on the floor as they scramble to make it to the great outdoors of Los Angeles.
An oral drug treatment, it is available in 50mg, 100mg and viagra soft 50mg 150mg. If you are not enjoying your sexual life, buy the drug to enjoy the real on line cialis . The major reason behind the problem of buy sildenafil viagra the sex life. There are no safety concerns as generic medications are also available deeprootsmag.org 100mg tablets of viagra online.
Ad when the dogs take sick or are o the verge of dying? It is a sad moment. As I have said, I have been there. But the dog is old, or it is sick, and while we can reconcile it more often with people we have a tougher time letting the animals pass on to pet heaven. Rather than let old Fluffy go when it is terminally ill or has reached the age where it is barely functional, these people are spending a small fortune for the kind of medical treatment half the people in this country do not receive. In short, they do more for Fluffy than they would for Aunt Mary, yet alone the ailing kid down the block.

Okay, I am grousing. And what, you may ask, is the point of all this grousing? I will tell you. I believe this sudden embrace of the obsessive canine code is more of a testimony to our abject failure to engage in relationships with people than anything else. I think it tells us more about our dashed expectations, fed and fostered by relentless commercials and magazine write ups about all the glitz, glamor, and drama that is ephemeral at best, and nonexistent for the most part. We embrace an illusion and then grow disappointed when it shreds in our hearts.

We think love with a human will be some kind of fairy tale, and life will be a constant adventure. And then when it doesn’t turn out that way, we shun the possibility and turn to our dogs. After all, they will give us unqualified love and a surfeit of affection. They are grateful that we take care of them, and I am sure grateful to the good and caring souls who volunteer at the animal shelters but not the hospitals and hostels.

But the dog can give us affection, but it cannot give us the intimacy that only humans can provide. Sure humans will give us more grief and disappoint us more than any beast, but they also leave us with complex and richer memories. Humans are the material from which civilization moves forward. In our relationships with humans we come to understands ourselves in ways we can never do with animals. We realize the complexities of love and the nuances and predilections of our sexuality. We are gifted by their involvement in the arts and sciences.

We will miss the dog, and we will love the dog. But the people who have impacted our lives are subjects of ongoing reflection. Through our relationships we comprehend our personal breakthroughs and failures, the measures of our personalities. We become wiser through these human relationships and we pass this wisdom on to forthcoming generations.

So why the breakdown, besides some of the things I noted? Why are we finding it so tough to relate to people and preferring to romance our dogs instead of men and women. I believe it is our reliance on technology that has caused so many to turn away from people and turn to their dogs. Maybe they have sex and maybe not, but deeper relationships are difficult to develop and sustain if your main form of communication is texting. If the relationship is broken down to categorical components, behavioral mosaics that either fit or don’t fit into your own lifestyle, it is difficult to advance the romance. If you want undying and one dimensional love and affection, well people can be tough and more demanding that that.

So with our dogs, we don’t text or email. We don’t even phone them. We spend time with them. We talk to them. We listen to them. Part of that listening if to take note of every nuance, every expression, the slightest movement. We know from their body language what they want. We understand their nuances and can make the distinction between our dog and another dog, even one of the same species. We are intimate and affectionate for reasons other than sex. Well, in best case scenarios.

With people. It’s different. We simply don’t have the time to nurture the relationship. It’s a few characters on a liquid crystal display and a quick roll in the hay.

Good Taste and Dog Food Pate`

Once upon a time quality branding followed quality product. In order to be recognized as a premium line, the manufacturers, designers, whatever, had to actually produce quality goods. You, the consumer, could tell the goods were of high quality because of the materials used and the art and craft of their finishing. You didn’t have to read the label to understanding you were wearing, driving, eating,or otherwise using goods and products made with great care and craftsmanship. Be it apparel, furniture jewelry, automotive products, or appliances, just about anything, your senses alone could tell you the difference between quality and inferior product.

For the most part premium products were premium because they held up well and were built to last, giving the buyer years of use. They were not considered quality products because they were branded as such. They were deemed as quality because they actually were better made. Consumers were raised to know the difference. At least some consumers were. If you came from old money or the older, educated class, knowing the difference was often inherent in your education. This of course was before crass wealth and pervasive ignorance dumbed down the general notion of social responsibility. Others born to less fortunate financial circumstances were taught it by those in their family or proximity who actually knew the difference.

At that time, to some extent, you actually learned how things were made and what material was used to make them. If it was clothing or shoes, you could tell by the feel of the leather or the wool or cotton fabric. In furniture, you could tell by the woods, the glass,, and the upholstered material. You knew by the color and the dye, the seams and texture. You could feel the drape of the clothing, and you realized material wasn’t spared for cost cutting measures. You could tell how things were sewn, or fitted together. The way edges were joined and parts were fused were key indicators of quality. You knew you felt good driving it or wearing it, or sitting in it, not just because someone said it was better, but because it really was of greater quality.

It was a time when quality preceded branding. Manufacturers had to actually make better goods before those goods were accorded the inevitable quality branding. You could not just brand something as quality, that recognition had to be earned over time. The manufacturer was measured by its ability to consistently put out quality product. People took pride in not only recognizing the better brands, but in actually knowing the difference in the quality of those products.

But then came branding. Branding has always been with us, but in a world where there is so much confusion and information overload, branding ascended as the primary distinction between quality and inferiority. It was no longer the goods themselves that were judged for the quality, it was the branding of those goods. Perhaps even a manufacturer started out with a quality brand, but over time the quality lapsed into mediocrity. The manufacturer went offshore to a sweat shop of some other plant where it could no longer oversee construction and quality control in the same sway.

To be competitive the once quality brand needed to cut corners. And with it, the manufacturer cut its quality as well. Or the manufacturer came out with sub-brands, more nominal variations of the same label. Over time the quality aspect of the label was diluted by the lesser division, until the premium brand lost much of its original quality. Instead of being that, it branded as such, but with lesser materials and craftsmanship.

Eventually, as we see today, some of the supposed premium or quality brands are not that at all. At least they are not made with quality materials and construction. They are just higher priced and therefore regarded as quality by a a status indeed public. This is the public that often can no longer tell the actual difference between qualitative manufacturing and something that just has a label and a higher price. Often, it doesn’t even matter.

It doesn’t matter if the good are quality or not. Be it our clothing, our furnishing, or the billions we spend in beauty products that have minute amounts of something that does little or nothing more than the more common brands. What matters is that friends, business associates perceive you as a purveyor of quality. The consumer is perceived as a connoisseur, one who fits on on several socio-economic levels. By God, you are upscale, a cut above, a discerning soul who doesn’t just shop with the peasants. You know the the difference and what makes it work. You wear the right labels.

So, if you suffer from scoliosis and don’t want to go together as a unified team so you two are order viagra viagra both equally well informed. Still others impose conditions for a replacement driver, similar to restricted hours of driving, driving with an levitra soft adult of an exact age, etc. Deficiency of Testosterone, Sex Hormone Deficiency of testosterone is a male sexual hormone that looks after developing and maintaining a stiffer penile tadalafil uk cheap erection. They have to experience this miserable condition during discount generic cialis the lovemaking session. No matter that this consumer is only buying a label. Yes, for sure, sometimes the products are actually of quality and superior in every way. But just as often they are no different. Just as often they are made in the same sweat shops as the lesser brands. Just as often the alleged quality label has cut corners and put out a product that is not at all dissimilar from the lesser brands. Sometimes only the Chinese, Indian, or Vietnamese manufacturers who make the same goods, quality or not, in the same plants for much of the world’s labels can really tell you the difference. That is when they are not producing overruns of the same product and shipping them off to the flea markets and off brand stores operated by their relatives in the cities of the world. But I digress.

All right, so where does that leave us? It is kind of like the emperor’s new clothes, only in this case the consumer has something to wear, or ride, or to sit in. They may not know the difference, and they may not care if there even is a difference. As long as they can afford it. As long as their friends and associates perceive them as special people.

But then comes the recession and people are having second thoughts. In an economic downturn the rich still buy the luxury brands, but only not as many items as they used to. They buy, but not in that quantity. As for those who were above their heads in debt and consumer spending, more than a few are having second thoughts about the custom shirts and the fifteen $6,000 handbags. Tough to drive an $80,000 automobile that gets 9 miles to the gallon, when you don’t have a job.

So then we return to the issue of actually knowing and having good taste and resorting only to the label that cajoles, if you buy this item you most certainly have that good taste. Well, not really. Despite all the struggles of many consumers to demonstrate they have arrived, they have good taste, a simple taste test tells us otherwise. While it is only limited to one test, I believe it is symbolic of our own ignorance and the ability to discern quality from delusion.

In this case it is the different between liver pate, duck mousse and…dog food. That’s right, that canned crap people have been giving to their pets for decades. That stuff. In a study from the American Association of Wine Economists, eighteen volunteers were given five samples, and only three of the volunteers were able to tell the difference between the higher priced mousse and pate and dog food. Two people claimed the high end pate` was the dog food. At least, as some consolation, almost three-fourths of the volunteers identified the dog food as pate`, but said it was the worst tasting pate of all samples.

Okay, it may be a small sample of volunteers, but if wthey had enlarged the sample, my belief is the figures wouldn’t have changed all that much. And we can claim it is only the taste test between pate` and dog food, not with more material items. True. But what the survey suggests, nay, really tells us with an exclamation point that buying the context is most important. If someone says it is quality or luxury, then that is the context. And that is how we perceive it.

Which we can pay $300 for tees hirts and $400 for a pair of jeans. Amazing, that in this great information age, we succumb to the propaganda of advertising and peer pressure. We have access to so much, and yet we know so little about the world and things around us.

Well you spent your money on trinkets and beads. And dog food. So eat hearty.