Category: Consuming

Yet one more article about people naming their kids after consumer goods.

Come ON! Tiffany was bad enough, and I guess Chanel and Armani were people before they were products, but the whole thing is just a little ridiculous. The least you could do is get an endorsement fee, right?

I’m back, although having a hard time getting back into the blogging swing for some reason. I will post pictures later, and restaurant reviews, and thoughts on SF MoMA and art. But for now, I’m still a little dazed.

Every year I do my shopping after Christmas, because it’s cheaper and because I try to avoid stores during most of December, since it’s so insane and I hate the carols. Of course, lots of other people do this too: apparently December 26th is the 9th biggest shopping day of the year. So, come January, I’m as over-shopped as the rest of the country.

Fave items of consumption this past week: the Moon Metro guidebook, Aria, a store of bizarre crap, Modern Appealing Clothing, not to be confused with MAC the makeup shop, True Sake, which is quite friendly and helpful despite the complete ignorance of every single customer including me, and food-wise, Ozumo, restaurant of criminally delicious food: unagi topped with foie gras, hamachi collar with ponzu/veal jus, flights of sake, ginger sorbet with plum wine, perfect maki, perfect execution in the entire enterprise. Yes, that was my birthday treat.

Quite a lovely city for wandering, peoplewatching, shopping, and general consumer madness– or for that matter, general madness, since many of the world’s delusional schizophrenics seem to have settled on its streets to mutter at passers-by.

Thought and beauty will come later today, with any luck.

How the whole tarrif thing works in relatively simple terms. For example, defining dumping subsidies:

Let’s say my mother wants to see me do well in the lemonade business, so she offers to pay me 15 cents for each cup I sell. Now I can charge 10 cents a cup and make a profit! I could give it away for free and still break even! Once again, my pricing advantage will run you out of business in short order. Subsidized dumping works this way, with government playing the role of Mom (without the warm chocolate-chip cookies before bedtime).

BFT is in a competitive market, and has few new members and a declining credit rating. On the other hand, they’re the biggest gym network in a big fat country. I think that a lot of people have been cancelling their gym memberships as cost-saving measures, but if the larger economy improves they’ll go back. The way Bally’s handles the post-New-Year’s surge of gym-joining and resolution-making should be a good indicator of their ongoing value.

Commerce Bank is one I should have paid attention to earlier. Great bank, strong growth, and not an oversized conglomerate like Bank of America (bad service, bad acquisitions: dump it). Open weekends, too. Even if the stock sucks (and it is expensive right now) I really recommend their checking account and consumer banking services.

SNE could get back in the saddle. They have great design, great technology, strong innovation, and a great brand. On the other hand, the industry is brutally competitive. But the Japanese economy can’t keep sucking forever, and when it revives, Sony should be able to perk up along with it.

RAD was way low for way long. Mismanagement, overexpansion, and so forth, drove them near collapse. But they’ve restructured their debt and their stores keep doing well, and management seems not to be screwing it up this time around, so I think they’ll keep doing well.

They say “in the long run, we are all dead.” It’s a grim statement, a warning that, while long-term planning is wise, you don’t want to plan for a future that will may not arrive. It can also be a false spur to non-planning. Hey man, in the long run, we’re all dead, so why worry?

The Economist has an article this week titled “In the long run, we are all broke.” It is a warning to plan for the aging of populations. I worry that the economy surrounding me will crumble. I try to behave responsibly and rationally but it’s difficult when I know that people around me are racking up long-term high-interest debt and buying high and selling low and loving it.

Yesterday, organizing and cleaning, I found an envelope of reciepts and expenses from the summer of 1996. I had a list of every tank of gas, every meal, and every hotel I stayed in, from Charlotteville to Tuscaloosa to Natchitoches to Eau Claire and back. When did I get so neurotic about money? Sometime before 1996, I guess.

Tiny tiny apartments. In Japan, of course, they’re wicked cool.

RIAA Radar, to tell you what music is made by musicians not represented by the loathsome RIAA>. It’s like a “sweatshop-free” label on your music, sort of. Although I’m sure that packaging was made in a sweatshop anyway.

Possible upcoming literary-themed Simpsons episodes. Me, I’m apeshit over the Family Guy these days.

Ol’ Mickey D is apparently angry that its legendarily crappy jobs are now officially recognized as such. Gee, you make awful, unhealthy products, you provide shit jobs for low pay and little hope of advancement (OK first job for a teenager, I guess, maybe, but even so…) and become a popular culture icon, and then complain when your popular culture iconography isn’t completely glowing? Not much sympathy for you, I’m afraid.

Not with so many people weighing 900 pounds or more. What gets me about this is the number of them who died from weight-loss complications. Sure, their weight was a serious, possibly fatal health problem, but what would make doctor prescribe a 500-calorie diet and not expect severe problems?

And since we’re supposed to discuss language and irony here, a rather odd little interview between a guy named Dong Resin and The PATRIOT Act. Not some band, mind you. The law itself. I think this is supposed to be some kind of a joke, but I’m not sure.

When I was a child, I would draw designs for amphibious sportscars and think of how cool it would be. Of course, so did all the other kids. But a few people never grew up, and they have now actually gone and built one and are selling it for just $250k. Cheaper than a 1BR condo in Cambridge, I guess.

(You didn’t think I’d manage a post without bitching about real estate, did you?).

Well, if she can have a foofy frenchified bidet or potpurri arrangement, I want a damn urinal in my bathroom.

Sometimes, looking at expensive things makes me dream. Sometimes it makes me just feel dirty. Like, I know this won’t make me happy, and I can’t afford it anyway, and what are you thinking? Want want want.

And the economists and politicians keep shouting. Lie lie lie. Fight fight fight. Covering their asses, wanting, waiting, needing, wheedling, distorting. It just makes me feel so dirty to live like this.

I try to live below my means, just on general principle, not because I want to save up for something– just because I think that spending money frivolously is … well, just wasteful. I don’t like to see waste. Maybe I’m more stingy and cheap than I thought. I like to think of it as “fiscal prudence.”

I’ve made this prediction before and I think it’s coming true: Rye whiskey is coming back. Increasing numbers of people are trying it and it’s appearing in larger presentations on store shelves.
Mall Discount Liquors in Alewife had a very large selection, and I picked up some Rip Van Winkle, which I’ve yet to try. This’ll be the 3rd bottle of rye I’ve bought, and will make two unfinished bottles in my collection– along with the three kinds of bourbon. That’s too much damn whiskey. I sense a party coming on.