Category: Consuming

Beer is best when fresh, I hear. And I definitely enjoy it, like revenge, cold. But this combination of revenge and beer is just too bizarre even for me.

Well, there goes that idea for a Halloween costume. Three hundred bucks for the mask alone?

I guess it would have been hard to eat and drink in that outfit anyway. Nonetheless, a Halloween mask seems like the most obvious merchandising for Donnie Darko. Oh Mammon, why have you not created supply for my demand, price-inelastic as it may be?

IN some ways, speculating on a merger for Merrill or Morgan is like forecasting a World Series championship for the Red Sox: every year, the possibility emerges, gaining some momentum and passionate supporters, only to crumble at the last moment as the stakes and pressures build. All the same, many people continue to believe that some kind of deal is inevitable.

Yeah, they’re screwing it up. All I can watch these days is Futurama and Family Guy– the Sox are of course doing what they do every year. The politicians are doing their thing. Realtors and lenders are duping their customers. Nor do our current soldiers have much hope for respect as vets,

Well, I’m going to start writing more poetry.

Comments open for this post: which of the following motorcycles is cooler?
Triumph Bonneville
Honda 599 (“Hornet”)
BMW F650 CS.

I would probably buy used and in a different color so I am more interested in hearing opinions about body style and your affection for the brand.

This is why I do not enjoy shopping.

When I bought my scooter, I was told that it was technically a motorcycle, since it went faster than about 25 miles an hour, so I should, technically, register it as such. If I were to claim it as a moped, I could probably get away with it. Probably. I figured, I have the license, I might as well get the plate and register it properly. The salesman was confused, somewhat, but let me go ahead and regsiter and pay taxes and get insurance. All on the up-and-up. Which was good, because not two months later my plates got stolen, and I got pulled over for riding a moped too fast, and was able to avoid the ticket by showing them my registration papers.

And now I have to pay excise tax on the bike to the city of Somerville. The RMV seems to think I have a $7000 motorcycle, and so the city billed me for taxes on a much nicer bike. When I called the assessor’s department to complain they told me I had to go by the sticker price even if I got a good deal on it. I said, that is the sticker price. They said, we have to go through the RMV to change the valuation, once we do that we can bill you the correct amount.

I called the RMV. They said, you have to go by the sticker price, and I said, that is the sticker price. They said, no, like what the dealer charges anybody. I said, that is the full list price for a new Honda NPS50: $1899. They were confused that I had bothered to register a moped the proper, legal way. Nobody does that.

We’ll see if I can eventually get this sorted out before I end up selling the scooter and buying a bike that’s actually worth what I’ll be taxed for.

I was all over the economic benefits of gay marriage more than a year ago. Economic problems? Let’s cater to groups we’ve ignored in the past: open a casino, sell booze on sundays, let gay people get married. Heck, legalize assault weapons– sales will go up, prices will go down. The casino thing is tricky, because a lot of the money spent in casinos is just sucked away unproductively, while a wedding really does benefit the economy more.

Legalizing pot would probably be the biggest benefit to the economy: we’d save a bundle on housing nonviolent drug offenders, we’d get huge tax revenues on marijuana sales, and new businesses would thrive, from hydroponic garden centers to delivery services. Vandalism and casual or impulse crimes would probably go down, too, because a lot of folks who would otherwise be out breaking things would be staying home watching “Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle” instead. Same with prostitution, man. Sin’s big business, as anyone who’s studied the Prohibition era of American history knows.

If you’re opposed to legal prostitution, dope, and gay marriage, then you’re opposed to personal responsibility, free enterprise, a strong economy and a small government. Stuff that in your conservative pipe and smoke it.

To go with this weekend’s Globe Article about million dollar homes (note that the URL ends with the directory “/would_you_pay_a_million_dollars_for_this/”), we have a New York Times feature on million-dollar studio apartments.

This points both to the overheated nature of the real estate market and, perhaps, the increasing cooperation between the Globe and NYT now that they’ve been owned by the same company for awhile now.

Consumer picks of the moment: t-shirts at threadless.com and a funny political one at goats.com. Graduated from Urban Outfitters but not quite to the Crate and Barrell level of bourgeois conformity? Try CB2, the hipper, cheaper version.

I recently bought a copy of Cargo, the boy’s version of Lucky, which is to say, a consumer’s guide without the boring objectivity or ratings of Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports may tell you if a car is safe and reliable, and may even offer notes on whether it looks good and handles well, but only Cargo will give you a two-page spread about the various iPod cases on the market.

Yes, this is obviously the shirt for me. Mmmm, brains and money.

Sample MP3 CocoRosie: Good Friday from Touch and Go Records. Check additional samples at Insound and CocoRosie reviews at Pitchfork.

The music has an off-kilter sweetness to it that I can’t quite describe. There are definite processing effects on the acoustic guitars and seductive, almost reedy vocals. But on the other hand it seems a little lo-fi… anyway, really good. Reminds me of Sparklehorse, some of the tracks from Tom Waits’ “Mule Variations,” and of September 67.