waiting to inhale

A close friend was recently kind enough to let me smell one of his books.
Now before you cart me off in a tumbrel, or start dialing 9-1-1, or 3-1-1, or whatever you do in a situation like this, allow me explain.

Ask any card-carrying bookworm: There is no finer fragrance than the interior of a yellowed tome with its notes of far-away lands, and an hermetically sealed universe that can only exist within the confines of a front and back cover. Some would rightfully argue that a book is a passport; a best friend; a portal into other people's fate, to be consumed as leisurely or voraciously as the reader would digest it. A good book is better than a good meal any day with nary a chance of acid reflux.

When I was a boy, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time in self-imposed solitude, living through the pages of as many books as I could get my hands on. I found myself consistently laden down with pounds of age-appropriate literature from the school library, somehow managing to later steal more adult titles from the shelves of the neighborhood bookmobile to feed my precocious quest for carnal knowledge.

Of course, there really isn't a point to any of this. Taken at face value, it is just a few paragraphs thrown together in a virtual shrine of the written word. Perhaps it is a call to arms for my fellow compatriots to continue fighting the good fight, reading the good paperback, forging forward against the wind, Oprah Book Club selection raised firmly in hand for everyone to see.
Besides, you can always sniff it later when nobody is watching.

what is a depression, and who is it to me?

Who wastes time fretting over whether the glass is half full, or half empty? What we really want to know is whether it is water or whether it is gin? Changes the equation entirely.

Brings to mind all of this incessant hand wringing over what to call the current economic downturn. A recession? A depression? A retrenchment? A Barnum-and-Bailey World?

Oh, come on... it's only a paper moon after all (and hopefully not one made of common stock, or cheese for that matter, although they are now worth about the same.)

Regardless of what term we settle on, all this daily sturmundrang has me wondering if the mere attempt to classify said blemish on the nation's fiscal complexion is what is leading to the stock markets steady decline.
It seems to me -- and I'm not one to give away my age for a cheap cocktail and a bag of peanuts -- but during the original Depression of the 30's, people just made due. They rolled up their collective sleeves and went to work righting the economic ship that was helmed by an improbable captain, FDR. They did not wallow in despair or self-pity, or go on Oprah to blab how much worse off their plight was than their neighbors.
If I see one more waif publically plead her case about lack of good roles for women before the national media, I'll just turn the channnel. That's what I'll do.

In the end, if we are forced to wear oatmeal boxes for shoes, make our own clothes, or drink from Mason jars again, so be it. I shall be the very last person to complain. Just make sure you that you fill that jar half full.... no water please.

plagiaristic dyspepsia

Is it just me, or does the new Pepsi logo bear more than a passing resemblance to the Obama campaign's emblamatic trademark?

The cola manufacturer unveiled the new design to coincide with the inauguration of the country's 44th President.

Hmmm. Probably just me.

(Now that's Cyanocobalamin you can believe in.)