“The process of bringing our wants and our needs into realignment,” says Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg, “is going to involve years of savings and frugality.” Or, to put more it more simply, “there is an anti-bling thing going on,” says Marian Salzman, chief marketing officer of Porter Novelli.
Party’s Over is the general theme of this article about how Americans are realizing that a reductionist lifestyle is easier and more fulfilling. Finally, I can confirm that I made the right decision staying a renter. Yes!
http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2008/08/08/the-end-of-credit-card-consumerism.html
Well this was after I put rice on it. Basil in SOMA, service sucks but the ribs were good.
I hate to say I told you so.
The economy is still in a tailspin and I read that India has got a similar problem with predatory lending.
Two documentaries that I saw a couple years ago turned out to be on the money. One was Maxed Out. It told about the gross amount of debt that Americans are in and how our economy depends on it and the growth it creates. The second movie was a peak oil presentation that made my girlfriend cry it was so fatalist. But the things predicted in that presentation are coming true. I don’t think it’s going to happen as stock-up-on-guns-and-gold quickly though.
I proposed writing a piece for frog Design’s designmind publication. The piece would be about how many current events are driving Americans toward design and it’s related priciples. I really hope it gets in because I could write ad naseum on the topic by now.
On the 47 later than normal, I saw a guy outside the bus. He was wearing really nice slacks and shoes with a moderately ratty undershirt and headphone wires flew around him up to his ears. He was walking with great haste, really speedwalking with that terrible hip swing. Despite looking like he was late for his master opus he was totally rocking out on the air drums.
There is a 50s-era McDonalds next to the San francisco hall of justice. I wonder how many cops eat there. That whole area is full of law people.
Lawyers cops bailbonds
With my terrible attention span, my perspective changes a lot or cannot be relied 100% upon. There are very few things that I percieve as constants because I will either forget or redirect my focus. One of the constants is change though. Things change constantly and the amount of change changes, but there’s always opportunities created to do the right thing.
I went to Yosemite national park this weekend and hiked half dome. I didn’t go all the way up because I think I may have vertigo and ‘basecamp’ was an achievement for me. The park is incredible and illustrates the massive change that happens all the time.
On the way to Yosemite we drove through a bunch of wind power turbines. It kind of drove home the theme of this week: Massive Change.
This video is really really funny.
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I started playing World of Warcraft again on a PvE server. I’m not sure what class I’m going to play but I leveled up a Human Warrior named Recession and an Orc Warlock named Badchoices to 10.
-playing tons more ping pong
-wedding planning while watching Jack Bauer in ‘24′ from season 1 with Lauren
-got glasses for my near sightedness, can now read subtitles from couch
-started using Google Reader
-D&D is on hold
-managing work better
Id Software’s John Carmack, one of the worlds most celebrated game makers, projects that Quake Live will have “hundreds of thousands of players, if not millions.”
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My guess is somewhere around 10 by 2030. Read more for a short clip of a cool animated anime version of Batman.
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One of the things I learned after school that I didn’t know while I was in school is that most people don’t know what they are doing. A lot of things are done on the fly. Many people are in trouble, a position of authority, or pinnacle of their field because of happenstance. With the exception of doctors, lawyers or accountants, I think.
My Dad’s friend, Mark Wumkes, when we visited him in Alaska, told me that the one thing he knows for certain is that there is no way humanity will ever know everything. He said something like “for every 1 thing we learn, 3 mysteries are created.” It’s pretty true and most of what we do is act like it’s not but that is ok. That is how we get anywhere, and focus on the ridiculous number of higher and more flammable hoops we leap through each financal quarter. Some people do not enjoy hoops and Alaska is one place with very few.
This flavor of nihlism really wrecks havoc on due diligence in the hoop-jumping realm. Because if no one, including me, knows what the fuck is going on, then it is difficult to take situations seriously that include hoop-jumping. And there are plenty of things that require sober attention and brevity. It seems mostly relationships and then also opportunities but only for split seconds. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself for now.
There’s going to be a ton of them and most of them will suck but some of them will be ground breaking for their niche markets.
You heard it here first.