Rambling Pines

When I was a kid, I was not one of the privileged jews who ran off to Summer Camp, and whatever premature coming of age eventfulness that came with it, but, looking back on it, this makes my parents look like geniuses in the sense that it has taken me an inordinately longer time to "grow up" than the average child. While this curse has swept up many of my generation, that the New Yorker stresses we refer to as "The Joshua Generation", I don't think I can speak with any accuracy concerning the coddled upbringings of other north-easterners, so I'll just stick to rants with an occasional music video interspersed to lighten the mood.



Life is really expensive, if you don't think this is true then you are either ignorantly blissful, incarcerated, or know something I don't (the latter is most likely truest, for the most obvious of reasons). If we think, for a moment, about the prospects of introducing socialist reforms in to the American economic system (something that is already somewhat occurring with every subsequent bailout), it often runs counter-intuitive to the hyper-competitive culture we foment in our fine land. It is also often emphasized that the Unites States of America also has an ever widening divide between rich and poor; this hinges on economic, cultural and ideological factors that worry me to no end; infrastructure reform, something Obama is ALL ABOUT, is entirely necessary to get us back on the right track.



Canada is a political nightmare right now, but I think they'll be okay, mainly because their milquetoast presence in the world makes them the most desirable place to be these days for disappointed left-leaning Americans, especially Neil Young fans.



Nick Kristoff's op-ed piece today on NY Governor, and all-around good guy, David Paterson fascinates me to no end; one, because he is speaking truth to power, but two because he is not to so subtly endorsing the consumption of diet colas, which while not carpooling on the diabetic highway do not seem to be the healthiest thing to be recommending. The soda industry is fucking HUUUUUUUUUUUGEEEEEE, worldwide, for christ's sake, you don't see the United Fruit Company killing native...oh wait, can you feel that residual implicit guilt Barack? Can you?!?!?! Word, go read a book.