this morning to a depressing state of affairs: massive drops, panic among investors, and everyone apparently running around in circles screaming 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!'

One of the major contributing factors in the current meltdown is job losses: as if the Unions haven't been screaming about that for years! Goes back to the greed of corporate executives to amass as much money in their personal portfolios as they can, heedless of the harm their immoral behavior causes... and some people think ethics aren't important. Well, they are; and I don't mean 'situational ethics', which is just another name for seeing what one can get away with before getting caught.

The stock market is a form of gambling. My dad taught me how to gamble when I was three. His chief maxim was: don't ever bet more on the table than you can afford to lose, and get up smiling. Good advice, and I've never regretted following it. His second maxim was: never forget that the percentage is always with the house. Speculators would do well to remember it. As for me: I prefer to do my gambling in the lottery, and I keep that at a very low level. After all, one may win, but the odds are against it; so why assume a risk one can't afford?

What escapes my understanding is the panic and total fear people are showing, when all they have to do is stand pat, and await the turn. After all, if one has invested in a business, the business isn't going anywhere. If it's a viable concern, what it produces is still going to find a market, and the turn will come eventually. So why should one go off the rails?

It's a bit like waiting out a hurricane, or a flood. Yes, there will be clean-up and re-building to do when it's over, but it will end. As long as one is alive, one can always start the clean-up, and hopefully learn how to minimize future risks. While it's happening, it's fun to watch.

I remember standing on the front porch when I was twelve and hurricane Carol was in full cry, back in '56, I think it was. I saw full tractor-trailers rolled down the street like toys, and fishing trawlers picked up and put on the docks, and some trees over fifty years old uprooted. My mother was so agitated! She kept trying to drag me down to the basement, especially after the wind knocked the chimney off the roof. Eventually, I went with her and my sister to the basement, but I didn't want to go. I only went because I was afraid she'd collapse if I didn't. I'd have stayed and watched the whole thing play out otherwise.

In a way, it was great fun, and it taught me a valuable lesson: no matter how much one thinks one knows, or has, the laws of nature are always there. Sooner or later, they go into action, and settle things their way. The current meltdown is a prime illustration of the principle. Human beings are social animals; that means we live and die by the welfare and well-being of the group, not the individual. When some individuals begin to behave in a way that threatens the survival and well-being of the group, they will be brought down. Period. Unbridled greed causes such disasters. It is evil. Don't espouse it, harbor it, or subject other people to it. If you do, you will have to pay the price when natural law kicks in...

last night has to be one of the best I've watched so far this year. Reggie Bush was most excellent, as was Drew Brees; but I think the strongest kudos have to go to Frerotte, who played one of the best -- if not the very best -- game I've ever seen him do, and the rookie Winfield. If he keeps on going the way he played last night, he's going to be one of the great defensive players. It was nice to see the Vikings play the way they did. I think I must have been one of the few who gave them even a small chance against the Saints. Every sports analyst I heard was betting on the Saints to blow the Vikings away. I did feel sorry for Grammatica, though, when he missed kicking the field goal that might have won the game for the Saints...

I got rousted out of bed yesterday morning by a friend in crisis, and the day went down-hill from there. Everything I had planned to do got scrapped, and all I could do by the end of the day was turn off the phone, shut down the computer, lock the front door, and immerse myself in Monday night football. Thank all the powers that be for the NFL! I think it's what keeps me sane in a mad, mad, mad, mad world...

vice-presidential candidates was something of a let-down. The local wits were making bets about which 'emergency' would occur to make it impossible for Palin to do the debate at all, after her interviews bombed so badly... and then she had a new hair-do, and the consensus was that she was wearing a wire, to enable her handlers to coach her on her answers. Whatever. At least, she made a respectable showing, although I think Biden clearly had the advantage.

The more the financial meltdown continues, the more the Republican ticket, with its umbilical cord tied so firmly to the Bush regime, slips lower and lower in public esteem. Deservedly so, imho! I wonder if there's any way at all to rescue the Republican party from the disreputable mess into which it's been shoved by the fat cats? It's sort of like trying to drag a dinosaur out of the LaBrea tar-pits...

Once upon a time, The Republican party was known for its conservative fiscal policies, its reputable ethics, and its standing as a home for elite thinkers... now it has become a haven for fundamentalist fools who can't speak English in coherent sentences, greedy opportunists who think the public treasury is their feeding trough, and cynical managers of the media who believe the public is largely formed of credulous idiots who will believe whatever they're told, provided they're told it often enough.

There are those of us who quietly shed a tear or two at the demise of what was once the Grand Old Party: usually, just before we change our political affiliation. The problem is there are few organizations available that aren't tainted in some way. The best of a poor lot seem to be the Populists and the Libertarians... who knows? One of them, or both, may be the true wave of the future.

of the financial meltdown becomes more and more evident. With the hauling in of credit limits, some people are being caught off-base, big time. In one way, I truly feel sorry for them. When one has lived for too long on the premise of instant gratification of every desire for luxury, it's not easy to learn to live within one's means; to resist the omnipresent pressure to spend, spend, spend, and let the future take care of itself...

Most of all, I feel for those who have spent most of their lives in the rarified atmosphere of the corporate world. They are, I think, unprepared for life in the real world. Adjusting to it may be something of a shock. Seeing the storm strip everything one has away from one is never easy to endure; I know exactly what it's like, because I've had it happen to me three times in my life. They will have to learn, as I did, that one can survive and rise beyond the destruction, and rebuild in time. All it takes is determination, and the willingness to do what one has to do, however lowering or distasteful it may seem. The lessons are valuable ones, and so they come hard. "What we gain too easily, we despise."

The ones who seem to be weathering the storm the best are those who refused to get taken by the here-to-fore lax and questionable means of getting rich quick. As the biker saying goes: 'A$$, gas, or grass: nobody rides for free.' All those hidden fees can be a definite spanner in the works...

My grandmothers and grandfathers managed to raise, among them, twenty-one children, and take care of several elderly relatives throughout the great depression: all without resorting to any unethical or immoral conduct. If we have to do it, we can. We are always stronger than we know, and wiser than we think: some of us, anyway. Enough, I believe, to help the rest of us survive, and recover in time.

is getting bored with the political campaign? The latest item making the rounds on the Net is that people are donating to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. Apparently, it's been quite a successful drive, bringing in more than $800 K in mostly new donations. Interesting. The next speculation is that Bristol Palin's wedding to her red-necked lover will take place the week before the election, in a last-ditch effort to capture the voters, but surely that's a false rumor. I can't believe even the RNC would plan anything that tacky and declassee! Should they put that poor child through it, I do trust it will backfire on them...

If I had my way, campaigning for any office would be limited to no more than 4 weeks before the election. I think one month of enduring all the campaign ads, etc., is more than enough time to bore everyone to tears!

As a relief from all the political stuff, I had friends over last night for dinner and a movie, the movie being the Liam Neeson dvd of 'Les Miserables'. I spotted it last week in the discount rack at my store, and had never seen it before. Since Hugo's masterpiece is a personal favorite of mine, I stretched the budget grabbed it.

I was most definitely impressed with the production. It's easily the best version I've seen, bar the musical. Uma Thurman's portrayal of Fantine is quite good, as is Clair Danes' portrayal of Cosette. Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean gives one of his better performances, but the best one of all is Geoffrey Rush as Jaubert. He manages to turn the relentless, excessively virtuous officer into a human being: one we may despise, and one who is living proof of his personal thesis, yet one for whom we can feel compassion. I was well satisfied at my stretching of the budget...

the political scene is still in action, with the blossoming economic crash? disaster? maelstrom? providing an interesting background. I have to say, I was quite surprised when I read the current Newsweek article on the economic crisis: it labels the root cause as greed. It surprised me because I honestly didn't think anyone in the media would have the guts to state it plainly... much less, publish it. Quite refreshing, actually.

For accurate commentary on current events I usually have to go to Comedy Central, and I don't like doing that because the language is normally quite vulgar. Personally, I object to abusive language as a staple of conversation. I see no reason for it. It no longer has shock value because it's been overworked and become much too common, and besides that, it indicates a deficient vocabulary and thus a dearth of intellectual exercise of any kind...

I have been the recipient of several compliments at work from no less a personage than the current district manager, who has been positively haunting our store. I wonder if it could possibly have anything to do with the number of grievances I've filed of late? I may be a cynic, but I tend to get suspicious when the powers that be start being too nice... I also wonder why he's been in our store so frequently: an interesting source of speculation. I shall have to discuss it with my rep.

swing, and people seem so surprised by it. As if the warnings haven't been there for years! As if no one has said it was coming for years... and the root source of it? Human greed. The desire to amass large amounts of money, beyond the reasonable needs of life, is unnatural: the product of diseased egos, and thus, as the Navajo characterize it, essentially evil.

One more time: poverty is unnatural. Allowing it to exist is the by-product of unbridled greed. The love of money is truly the root of all evil. Money is a medium of energy exchange, like blood in the human body. When it is allowed to collect in one area of society, as when 90% of the wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of less than 10% of the population, thus starving every other area, it becomes the bearer of dis-ease, and results in catastrophe. When that happens, every member of society pays the price.

One would think people would have learned in the past that a healthy society is one that cares for every member of that society, and neglecting the welfare of the many only results in the destruction of the few: who should have known better. It's such a simple lesson. Why do people seem to have such difficulty learning it?

So, what happens now? We'll survive it and pick up the pieces; and some fools will try to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. Hopefully, the rest of us will have the common sense to make an omelette out of Humpty, and feed everyone with it.

the pump on my aquarium went wonky and started making weird noises, loud enough to wake me up at 6 am; and, naturally, once that happened, Cinnamon got in on the act, closely followed by the rest of the crew... I really hate getting wakened before I'm ready... especially on Friday, and especially when I'm facing a late shift at work. On the bright side: I'm off tomorrow, and a Saturday off isn't to be despised.

I've been having an e-mail discussion with my son over the campaign, and the relative merits of the candidates. It has been most amusing to read his 'rants', as he calls them; and when I answer his points and refute them, his reaction is one of stunned surprise that his mother can think and reason.

I wonder, sometimes, from where he thinks he inherited his brains? He seems to have no difficulty accepting the fact of his father's intelligence, but has great problems realizing mine. One more time: how on earth did a liberated woman like me wind up with two sons who are both male chauvinists? It has to come from a sex-linked chromosome! Possibly, a defective chromosome...

It's a bit like teen-agers, when they first discover sex and think they invented it, and no one prior to their generation knows anything at all about the subject... He was sixteen when he informed me that mothers don't do 'that'. When I laughed and asked him how he thought I got him, he told me UPS delivered him: to the great amusement of the assembled company.

I thought, at one time, the fun was over when the kids grew up and moved out on their own; but I'm finding out that isn't true. They are far more amusing as adults! I find myself enjoying them much more now. Maybe it's because I no longer have to worry about how I'm fulfilling my responsibilities as their parent. That part is over, and they can deal for themselves. All I have to do is take care of me and my critters, and enjoy them as adults. It's most refreshing...

actually not too bad: at any rate, I did manage to survive it... My Union rep, Cindy, is down with a broken foot (she fell off a ladder while arranging flowers at her church) and Derra, one of our head clerks, somehow managed to tear the ligaments in one of her knees, and she's out for awhile, which means poor newbie Kat is now doing full duty as a head clerk, and going cuckoo. She tried to do an audit on a drawer last night, and managed to slow my already slow computer at work even more. That was fun. I had one customer who actually had to wait three minutes, and swore she was standing in line for twenty minutes, proving once again that time itself is mainly subjective!

While checking out the news this morning, I read Doonesbury, and had a chuckle over the latest thread on it: the Sarah Palin action doll sequence. (It even lies.) I also had an e-mail from a friend which contained a link to a PBS poll for Bill Moyers, asking if people think Palin is fit to be vice president. It seems the RNC is asking all their people to try and stack the poll in Sarah's favor, so they can use it in more of their sleazy, lying ads. So, of course, I had to go to it and vote against that dweeb. I forwarded the link to everyone, because I don't believe anyone I know is stupid enough to buy into the RNC's 'disinformation', and besides, they already have enough phoney polls. One of the rags on the rack at my checkstand had a headline saying Palin's daughter was caught on tape using drugs. I thought it was her husband and son who were the druggies...

On a lighter note, while watching a football game, I saw the latest ads for the new cars, and one of the ads for the Corolla begins by saying "Toyota has approved this ad"... Now, if only we could persuade the writers of commercials to write for t.v. shows, we might actually get something more interesting on the air than the perennial so-called 'reality' stuff.

To begin, Cinnamon woke me up at five am, pacing around the bed, and sticking her wet, cold nose into my face. I was able to ignore her for about twenty minutes; but then Sir Henry decided he needed to pounce on Callie Girl, and she, naturally, objected -- loudly, with much hissing and spitting; and, of course, she did said hissing and spitting about two inches from my ear. Add to that the fact that I have to work a day-stocking shift from 2.30 this afternoon until 11 tonight, which means I won't be able to work on 'Faberge', and the day promises to be a horror!

Oh, well. Look on the bright side: the Miami Dolphins trounced the New England Patriots 38 to 13 yesterday. It was great. There are those who will say this only happened because Tom Brady is out for the count; but I don't know. Maybe the powers that be arranged for him to miss the humiliation... certainly, I think T.B. himself would prefer a physical injury to that!

The twits at ao-hell are doing their best to spread the performing enhancement drug scandals from MLB to the NFL. They're also trying their best, in between brainless items on Hollywood celebrities, to sell the voters on the idea that McCain and Palin are good for the country. Hopefully, no one is stupid enough to buy into it... then again, I've actually heard one or two people say they like George Bush: which made me wonder what they were smoking!

The Emmy Awards finally did something good, recognizing the formidable achievements of the 'John Adams' series. It's easily one of the best I've ever seen, ranking right up there with 'Roots' and 'Shogun'.