Remember all that talk of change?  Well, things are changing, that's for sure.   

Looks like it's just the beginning, and already lay-offs and jobless claims are at record highs. Consumer Confidence is at all-time lows. Malls have lost their luster. Unsold goods are piling up, which is a problem, seeing as...

We are reliably informed that whatever part of the economic crisis can’t be pinned on Wall Street — or on mortgage-related financial insanity — can be pinned on consumers who overspent. But personal consumption amounts to some 70 percent of the American economy. So if we don’t spend, we don’t recover.... In other words, shopping was part of the problem and now it’s part of the cure. And once we’re cured, economists report, we really need to learn how to save, which suggests that we will need to quit shopping again.

Locally, overpriced Newbury Street shops are shuttering up.  The MBTA is still angling hard for another fare increase.  You know if they're reluctant to spend money they don't have it must be serious, right?  Police are seeing a surge in local circulation of counterfeit cash.  So it's not just the rich using funny money anymore.

Speaking of. The nation's wealthiest havens have been hit by the "downturn,"too, forcing some of the nation's richest to put one or two of their spare condos on the market.  The Postmaster has announced that the postal service may cut back delivery to five days a week.   And even while layoffs herald a heyday for employee lawsuits, billable hours are giving way at law firms.  Far from finding a fix, the World Economic Forum last week in Davos was "mired in indecision and uncertainty." 

Newspapers are tanking.  Leading some to suggest that they be turned into nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities. Leading some to ask how this would impact media bias ("though endowment-financed newspapers would be less beholden to advertisers, they would instead be beholden to their large donors," as if they are not now beholden to the likes of Rupert Murdoch), while others wonder: if newspapers were transformed into non-profits would anyone read them then? 

As you can see, depression breeds desperation. 

Good thing circumcision's still cheap, I guess.  Apparently that's what women want, at least American moms.  I haven't really weighed in on this debate in a while.  Suffice it to say that, no offense to the ladies, but no female should have any say whatsoever in the matter.  How 'bout if we agree not to circumcise you, and in return you agree not to circumcise us?  How easy was that?

Just because our judgment sometimes sucks doesn't mean yours doesn't too.  In fact, in light of recent studies that have hinted that "the disparity between the objective and the subjective might exist, for women, in areas other than sex" I'd say we should all just stop making irrevocable decisions about other people's genitals, period.

The article in The Daily Beast I'm talking about here, about how a husband and wife arrived at the decision to circumcise their newborn — not based on religious custom, but on the wife's finicky aesthetics — was actually pretty appalling, outlining precisely why parents should have to pass an IQ test before they're allowed to reproduce, not to mention make vital decisions regarding someone else's genitalia. 

The most absurd argument for circumcision is that if a father is circumcised his son should be, too, so that he'll look like dad.  I don't know what kind of family you people grew up in, but not only did my dad not wave his dick in my face on a regular basis, we never appeared in public waving ours together.  I got my father's eyes.  That was enough, thanks. 

The second stupidest argument for circumcision is that the boys in the locker room will make fun of your son if he's not circumcised.  Newsflash, bitches: they will make fun of him regardless.  If they can't make fun of him for his foreskin — and boys at that age are so phobic, there's an obvious built-in comeback in "why you looking, bitch? You want some?" — they will make fun of him for the fact that he has skinny legs, a stupid haircut, a pipy voice, soaps up his ass in the shower.  Whatever.  That's what boys do.  Which is why the expression isn't "boy up," but "man up."

The fact that the papa in this case caved does not bode well for this kid.  I mean, his mother had no better argument for circumcision than that foreskin "looks weird."  Seriously?  What if the rest of the kid looks weird?  What then?  What, are you gonna cut off his head if curly hair's out of fashion this year?   If you don't like the way it looks, here's an idea: DON'T LOOK AT IT. 

Papa needs to grow a pair, and learn to bargain better.  That's a skill that not only could have saved his son's foreskin, but might save him some hard-earned cash in this tough new economy.  Yes, my friends, haggling is making a comeback!  I have my eye on this snazzy new C&B Camden sofa in tobacco green.  Do you think I can talk 'em down a couple hundred bucks?  Even if I don't have my foreskin to bargain with?

What am I gonna do with a sofa, you ask?  Well, you can live without foreskin, but you can't really live without a sofa, can you?  We've got a couple here at the Orphanage, but I went to dinner with The Ex Tuesday night, and turns out my old apartment in Dot might be opening up in the spring.  I think I can negotiate a decent rent, and if I can find myself an absentee roommate in the meantime, it looks like hasta la vista to Seven Hills.  There are several variables at play at this point, so I'm not quite ready to commit to the move yet, but it looks pretty promising.

If I do end up back in Dot, I will be in need of some home furnishings — so if anyone has a line on a dining room set, coffee and end tables, sofa, armchairs, etc., please be in touch.  Let's haggle.  Nothing too shabby, though.  I can do shabby on my own.  I have years of experience.  But my interior designer friend Iory, after seeing a picture of my armchair filtration device, has forbidden me from taking it with me.  I protested it just needed reupholstering, but he has forbidden me from speaking of it ever again, except as kindling.

So I'll need a new armchair filtration device as well.  I'm thinking I could try that old paper-clip trick.  Surely Crate & Barrel will go for it. 

One thing I probably won't need is a TV.  A recent discovery of mine is that whole episodes of The Daily Show and Colbert Report are streamable on the internet the day after their original broadcast (and are archived from there, presumably).  I have to admit that while I find Jon Stewart funny, and Stephen Colbert funnier, I don't find either of them — or really hardly anyone, funny enough to stay up until midnight for.  So being able to watch last night's episode whenever I want next day has allowed me to tune in when I think they're bound to be funniest, which, frankly, varies from day to day for me, depending on circumstances obviously.

The internet is coming along, but it's not there quite yet, is it?  But television is in its death throes.  I don't care how digital it gets, no one needs 300 channels you can't watch all at once, do they?  And no one wants to have to go to the trouble of programming their TV to save their favorite shows to watch at some future point when — what? — you'll have three years free to catch up on them all?  You can't even afford a staycation this year, don't think you'll be taking early retirement like you'd planned. 

Personally, I find television tedious.  It's like an uninvited deaf Amway salesman with Tourette's, who's parked in your living room barking at you all night and day.  You can't communicate with it.  You can't negotiate with it.  You can't get rid of it.  It doesn't care about you.  TV's all about TV.  About what it wants to do and when it wants to do it.  If you don't like it, too bad.  "It's on when I say it's on."  Why?  "Because I said so.  And here: let me insult your intelligence and try to sell you crap you don't need while I'm at it."

Still, people watch it and listen to it and do what it tells them to do.  That's the thing.  And you wonder why everyone's dysfunctional these days.  OK, yes, it gives people with nothing else to talk about something to talk about around the mythical water cooler.  That is, when they can break out of their little cubicles.  But seriously, here you're at the office talking about The Office.  And when you're back at the house, there's House.  Doesn't that seem... strange, or something, to you guys? 

TV has its uses, I'll admit. It keeps people off the streets.  But the internet is making inroads.  Already, studies have found that "46 percent of women and 30 percent of men would opt to forgo sex for two weeks rather than give up access to their precious Internet for the same period."  Why?  Because the internet can love you back. 

The fact that more and more of television is available when you want it, in relatively high definition on the internet, bodes well for its continued relevance.  Not only do I not have to watch it late the night before to have something to talk about at the water cooler next day, I CAN ACTUALLY WATCH IT AT THE WATER COOLER.  Or I'm sure I could if I had one of those fancy i-thingies. 

Anyway, I was watching Colbert the other day, and you can always tell when they've booked him a guest he thinks is a dud.  His guest that night was Philippe Petit, of Man on Wire fame...


...and he's very French.  Sort of flitty and flighty.  Impish.  Socks don't match.  You know the type.  Stephen was not amused.  And he made it perfectly clear about a minute into the interview that he wasn't pulling any punches when Petit tried to hijack the show, rearranging everything on the table à la Rain Man.  Colbert blasted Petit's complimentary water mug with his fire extinguisher. 

I streamed the movie on Netflix a couple weeks ago, and it was actually pretty good.  Petit has a real talent on the tightrope, and in his youth at least he had the magnetism to attract people to his "cause."  That was what was so interesting about the documentary for me.  Why did people follow him?  Despite the title, he didn't do it himself, not by any means. 

In fact, I think the most poignant scenes are in the last minutes, after the tightrope walk, when Petit was in the rush of his fifteen minutes of fame, and his loyal friends realize that all along instead of partners in crime, they've been run-of-the-mill ego-enablers. At the 1 hour 26 minute mark of the movie, his ex-best friend breaks down.  He can't articulate what "happened," why the friendship "broke" after Petit walked the tightrope between the twin towers. But there — at 1'26" — is the story of art. 

They all got deported, while Petit got his charges dropped by juggling for kids on camera, got laid, and got his picture in every paper on the planet.  There is something grotesque about Petit now.  As if he has become a parasite living off that moment in time.  Even when the artist is the art, he's not always art.  Only rarely does he transcend himself to become art.  And the sense you get from Petit now is that he has confused himself with that magnificent moment. 

What I'm saying Philippe, is:  what have you done for me lately?

He's sort of in the child-star category, I'd say.  Much like America itself, perhaps.  But in these tough times sometimes you gotta look to former child stars for inspiration.