THAT DAY

Our house is going solar. We're voting on the bids this week, so I email all the solar firms reminding them to send bids now or never...

Instant messages pop up. My ex-girlfriend Cheryl! Message after message. Obsessive. I feel stalked and don't read them, turn off the instant message option. I didn't realize the default allowed people to interrupt you like this.

Feeling shaky, I drive down to the San Mateo Highlands to pick up my sister Althea and take her to the airport. On the way, as I right turn at a stopsign, a cop tickets me for not stopping fully. The first moving violation I've had in a decade at least. Rattles me more.

Althea and I have lunch at Shiso Restaurant. She flew down to attend her daughter's graduation. Althea says "She was distant for years; I think she blamed me for dragging her away from family and friends, leaving our small town after my husband dumped me for another woman." As his wife, Althea had a stake in the family ranch, but he gave her child support only, and his family backed him up. Althea felt they quietly drove her out of town. I hadn't realized that her current poverty is partly from her deep reluctance to fight for her rights. And she worries she's doing it again in a lesser way. Loves her current husband, but he slips into debt a few thousand a year... is she liable?

I too will do anything to avoid a fight. Siblings are such embarrassingly revealing mirrors!

THAT NIGHT

That ranter's drawn a listening ring-- turtlehead economist, he builds a slow case in dismal jargon til he's clamoring "War caused America's crash." Quite so, but hardly news! Why natter and detail in polysyllables each sector's woe when six-bit words explain our epic fail no better than that laconic song Malvina wrote some forty years ago: "The rich feed off the breast of war; grow fat, as all the rest goes wrong for all the rest of us." What more?	Our pundit plays scenes from Anemia, that Harry Potter knockoff film. In it, Hogwarts is a high school in a Muggle district gone bankrupt. And the monsters who chase our heroes three from bus stop to dead-in-the-water school are budget-busting creditors who drool to squeeze blood from the students (ouch) since Hogwarts turned so turnip. Though "Something will always turnip!" Our heroes slip into a stone gash. Cathedral-caverns echo ahead. But the only path in is a rickety ledge
past pits of magma hell! A deadly red financial meltdown. Ahead, one reckless kid falls in. Are clone-Harry, Hermione, and Ron financially balancéd enough? Looks bad... But here comes Cool Guy in shiny shades, on his blazoned skateboard. A Guy he is, for Cool Girls can't (as Hollywood is sure) balance skateboards, budgets, lives-- too busy with their navel rings and planning to be wives.	Through the pit Cool dives! Skates the red pool of fire immune. Our ledge-trapped three leap to him and cling, train-trailing weightlessly. Oh. It's Biblical too--as Ronald Reagan knew. We need financial hell to hound our tired poor. But being Hollywood-mirror-cool Teflons red financial heat! No scandal sticks to the sunshade boys. Now ain't that neat?

• Jargon-spouting economist: At lunch, the sushi bar had a TV on. A GOP mouthpiece said Obama's people have "a culture of corruption." Ooh, right, those Democrats deregulated banks and caused the financial meltdown of 2008! Just hilarious...
• War drains the treasury: my friend John Claydon argues that budget reform's not enough--Bush's wars really caused the recession and only peace will spur recovery.
• Gender cliches, jokes about financial meltdown: my sister settled her divorce TOO amicably. He cheated on her, he left her, and he gets the house and pays no child support? Wow. And I thought I was conflict-avoidant!
• Hogwarts besieged by drooling capitalist monsters: well, J.K. Rowling put Hogwarts under the fat pink thumb of Miss Umbridge. What a sweetie! My favorite neocon.
• Turnip: the one proverbial financial blessing of bankruptcy: "You can't squeeze blood from a turnip."
• Cave, fall into lava: not content with ripping off Rowling, the film's stolen Tolkien too! It's the Crack of Doom where Frodo must destroy the Ring--but, addicted, can't. Joe Cool is like mad Gollum, who snatches the Ring and dances in the lava abyss. I think the dream's pointing out that banks and credit companies wanted consumers addicted, deep in debt--just as Sauron seduced mortals with magic rings. Who's most to blame--addicts or pushers?
• Joe Cool skates on thin "ice": Partly the financial managers who got bailed out... but partly me! Broke, but won a Pell grant and got my degree with no debts; now I'm winning solar-energy grants for our home. Mastering finance and grantsmanship step by step! So art-grants to publish my dream-poems and comics may be a next step. I think I'm a timid mouse, but I'm also an artist who skates the fiery face of poverty and thrives. A cool skill to have in a meltdown world.
• ACTION: Quit acting like Harry, Hermione, and Ron, clinging in terror to a ledge. Apply for scholarships and send my work to publishers. My art is cooler than I know. If idiots like financiers can skate on meltdown's face... so can I.

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