If you are like most Americans and want to know who to blame for the price of gas, you don't have to look any farther than your own back yard furniture.

Your Average American, like maybe you, is not rich. I hate to tell you this, but there is a reason for that. Your Average American picks Cheap over Quality every day. He and she figure that less money for stuff means more money for both of them. And they are right, in the short-sight term. But in the long-sight term, they are ruining their own standard of living even as they spend.

For examply, shopping at Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, prices are lower than your corner store almost every time. Wal-Mart don't buy from places that pay union wages. Heck, Wal-Mart itself don't pay union wages. No, Wal-Mart has like 80% of its stuff coming from China. In China, workers don't need to be treated so nice or paid so well in other countries, so prices is really, REALLY cheap. So you buy dishes and lawn chairs for a steal. There's more money in your pocket. You really saved.

Then you go fill up the gas tank and gasp. The price of gas has, like, doubled. The world price for crude oil has gone higher than even the oil-company CEO's themselves want. And the experts say it ain't coming down any time soon, because China can use whatever the Saudis can pump out.

China is supplying Sam Walton's retail juggernaut, and as money gets tighter, more American people figure to save a few bucks at Wal-Mart meaning China needs more energy, which means the price of oil goes up. Never mind the question about what happens when the well-paid workers have really vanished and there's nobody to buy what China makes any more.

Your dollar when you spend it is not just about you getting the cheapest deal at this particular store. My mom taught me to shop local, even if the little shops was more expensive. She lived in a community that she helped make by keeping it alive. Not all small store owners are good and not all big chains are bad, so pay attention to the whole story. And start taking responsibility for the world you live in by putting your money where it improves that world instead of saving a dollar at the register only to pay five more at the pump and not having any choice of where to shop but Wal-Mart.
9:00:49 AM    comment []   Wisebabe Website

Your Republicans and mine is trying to insult Kerry by saying he looks French. Apparently, lots of people don't like the French. Mostly because the French make them uncomfortable. The French have style. They like fancy food. They pay attention to beauty in fashion, in art, in women. And the French feel just as good about themselves as we do without being a superpower. But the problem is not the French. The problem is we.

I love your big, born-rich bubbas as much as the next girl who has expenses, but they are starting to act like the world is supposed to adore them, instead of understanding that wealth is just a way to get girls to tolerate your company.

Your Freud, he pointed out that human (which for him meant male) psychology was all sex and death. That's it. Fortunately for civilization, sex mostly involves women, and for women, it ain't about death so much as life, preferably with a house, garden, and nice clothes designed by one of those French couturiers. If a man wants sex with her, he has to civilize himself first.

But if you take the sex off the man's plate, he's got nothing left but death to keep his testosterone levels up. He'll just have to have a war. You see? Your male is not someone to be left in charge without the restraining influence of females who know what an hourglass figure is for.

This is why I blame the mothers and wives of the Administration for the mess we are in. These women shut sex up in the Bible and use it to banish Lust from Love. The males is raised to believe they can do anything and get away with it, except for those nasty sex things their mammas disapprove of. This is like telling somebody they can live at Disneyland but can't go on any of the rides. It leads to terrible frustration and displacement, kind of like a bonsai, only with character.

Then, like most boys, these males marry gals just like their mammas, which means women who dress mousy, purse their lips even when they kiss, and shake their fingers at him if he has any fun in a libido kind of way.

But Lust doesn't evaporate. It is a Force of Human Nature, and so it finds a new partner in Power, especially the Power of Life and Death. Hence we have got the mess in Iraq. The only problem with War Lust is there is no orgasm, and so you got to just keep at it or you're left with nothing. This is why the war on terrorism will never have an end. Any more than the war on drugs. The only time this nation rose up against war was in the era of Free Love in the Sixties. This was not accident. Eros kidnaps Psyche, after all, not the other way around. This is why the Attorney General spent $5000 to cover the marble boobs of Lady Justice.

Not the French. There are naked statues all over Paris, and folks actually look at them. French lingerie is expensive and exquisite, which shows that your French man puts his money where his mouth is. They knew this war was about a tortured Administration needing to get its rocks off in the only way left open. War.

Your cynics, they say the French did not go to war in Iraq because of oil. Different cynics say the US is at war because of oil. One side shouts terrorism. One side shouts profiteers. I say cynicism is glaucoma of the mind.

Your French people, they figure that pretty much everybody has sex. They show nakedness on TV and movies more then they show violence. They even talk about it in the broad daylight, seductive talk being good practice for diplomacy and hence the reputation that French is your language of diplomacy.

Whereas in the US, since you can't talk about sex, you get a lot of violent action that sneers at thinking or talking. You blow things up in the movies and in video games. You show fake reality competitions full of humiliation of losers all over the television. And when the mighty do speak, they don't talk about senstivity and nuance. They talk about smart bombs, and surgical strikes, and Shock and Awe to arouse the masses to the lofty conquest over evil.

This Administration vowed to return integrity to the White house, and they really do believe killing an Iraqi wedding party during war is much less obscene than a bit of fellatio between friends. War is the only acceptable aphrodisiac, and sure, they do actually have to send Americans to die, but not big mamma's rich boys. No, they stay home while kids from Eau Claire (French for Bright Water) Wisconsin actually do the dying.
7:49:16 PM    comment []   Wisebabe Website

Your Democrats in California is all huffy and high-horse about the Governor calling the legislature a buncha "girlie men." But huffy and high-horse is a very girlie response. A manly response is to duke it out, mano a machine gun.

Governor Mr. Universe, he knows about squashing the opposition, and if it was only guys like him in charge of the world, we wouldn't have no civilization. And me, I like having laws and public works like roads and indoor plumbing and places like Paris. Paris is definitely got a girlie side.

Civilization, after all, is a very girlie thing. You know, talking instead of hitting. Sharing instead of enslaving. Making things beautiful instead of bombing them back to the Stone Age. Trying to take care of the whole family, even the cousins who spend a lot of time freeloading in state institutions.

People who say that the tough guys made this world are teenage-minded adults who watch too many movies made by teenage-minded adults. Even your big hulking Mr. Universes, who tear through their competitors like so much raw meat, they know they can only go so far before women start wrinkling their noses at them and going home with someone nicer who bathes. And maybe uses hair gel.

What's an Ex-Terminator to do? He can insult the 'girlie men' all he wants, but if he wants to attract female attention he better be breathtakingly rich. It takes very expensive presents to overcome the smell. And sooner or later, the girl of his dreams is gonna get him to bathe. And maybe use hair gel. And drink latte'. And then, as he learns bit by bit to compromise, his worst nightmare comes true. He's turned into a 'girlie man' himself!

Girlie power has beaten Mr. Universe. Just look at the California Legislature. Arnold can whine, he can hurl insults, but sooner or later, he'll come with hat in hand, like a cat with a dead mouse. He don't eat the mouse, even though he would enjoy crunching its bones. He lays it at the girlie's doorstep in hope that he will be given a saucer of cream in milady's boudoir. Civilization wins again.
11:40:33 AM    comment []   Wisebabe Website

I love shopping malls. Malls is America, don'cha know, especially now that they got not only the big stores, but those little booths outside. Very democratic. Big enterprise and small trying to catch the eye of women and their purses.

I feel so connected to the whole of humanity in a mall. It's every marketplace throughout the history of civilization, said history really being just the history of shopping made to look like the males was doing something more than making pretty things and places to attract women.

Anyway, I was outside Bloomingdales at the Century City mall, sitting in the sun and sipping a cup of coffee with a friend. The little booth across from us was twinkling with sparkly accessories: hair clips, pins, earrings, buttons, purses. You name it - it had rhinestones all over it. Many people say your flashy is trashy, but those people is just repressed, or worse, trying to prove we humans ain't animals when you scratch the surface of your cerebral cortex.

Descartes, he only got it half right when he said "I think therefore I am." He shoulda said, "I think therefore I am not doing anything important right now." The thinking part is pretty new, and while your higher human brain activities like compassion, using the subjunctive tense, and conceptualizing quantum entanglement are nifty, they are resting on the older mammal brain with its mysteries of your mommy love and your sense of humor, which anybody who has played with a dog knows is pretty well developed in your four-legged friends.

This Mammal Brain in turn is sitting on top of the Reptile Brain that really runs the show. Marketers know this, which explains the success of campaigns offering more food as in Super Sizing and implied sex as in girls as naked as TV will allow sucking beer right from the bottle. So long as Reptile Brain is active, Human Brain is dissolved into that great pool on being that your zen masters spend a lifetime trying to find with only the poor cortex, them not wanting to ride their mental crocodile to bliss 'cuz it has a habit of turning on you and then you'd never be able to come up for air and think like Descartes again.

Which brings us back to sparkles. Your human eye has both rods and cones. Cones is where we see color. They need a lot of light to work and are grouped more in the middle of the eye. Rod only tell black from white, but they are much more sensitive to light and motion, and are more concentrated around the edges. Not only that, your rods are hooked right into your Reptile Brain.

So a movement out the corner of your eye grabs your attention no matter what the Descartes part of the brain is thinking. And every girl in rhinestones knows (as well as some boys who want to appeal to boys and so wear, say, a set of keys hooked to flash and dangle outside their pocket...) that motion and flash are the way to make a man's reptile self turn his head and look with his reptile eyes.

And while he's looking with his reptile eyes, he might just notice how sexy she is and fall in love. He don't know what made him turn his head at the exact moment She was walking by. He figures Kismet, Fate, Destiny. But she knows the real cause. Rhinestones.
9:31:18 AM    comment []   Wisebabe Website

It being a perfect June day here in Lost Angeles, I went shopping in Century City which is an outdoor shopping mall so that a girl can enjoy Nature and Commerce at the same time.

At Victoria's Secret, in the shop window and around the store, were the cutest pink polka-dot dogs you ever saw. Well, I talked to the saleslady about what would happen to the pups when they changed the display case. I was thinking I might adopt. She went and got the manager.

The manager of Victoria's Secret was young and dark and sort-of hip, you know with the greasy hair look that 's popular with the sort-of hip. Although I'm sure his manners are successful with young women who are insecure and trying to get male approval with how they look, he sure didn't know how to talk to a woman like myself who understands that all of civilization is just a construct of your males to give them more chances to have contact with women. In a perfect world, this young buck would hope to have a girl like I just say hello to him. But things is topsy-turvy right now, and his manners have not been honed by female indifference, and so he didn't even let me get a word out. He scowled. He sighed. He knew he was important, and I was not. If this keeps up, civilization is going the way of the Edsel.

Anyway he told me, and not even with regret, that when the displays changed, those dogs would be destroyed and thrown in the trash. Destroyed! Can you believe that? You could tell he was looking forward to doing it himelf. Your sort-of hip people do not like 'cute' even if they do have to put up with it working in Victoria's Secret. The customers who do, lured in by canine cuteness, would not be happy to imagine those dolls just smashed and trashed.

I know they are his property and he can do what he wants, but many people feel the same way about their living dogs. It's mine and I can abuse it any way I want. It is not so big a step from pink polka-dot to dalmation as you would think. Cruella D'Evil would be proud of Victoria's Secret. She's prob'ly on the board of directors

A humane business would be grateful for the chance to dispose of their promotional dogs humanely. A civilized manager would not enjoy denying a customer anything. A promotion-seeking company would donate the dogs to a children's hospital, or coordinate a cute adoption event alongside some animal rescue organization. Or just let people come on the day the display changes to pick them up and give them a good home. But no. Into the dumpster with the doggies. It's may not be a crime, but it's a shame.
8:26:50 AM    comment []   Wisebabe Website

The righteous John Ashcroft, the son and grandson of preachers and a devout Assembly of God follower himself, had to testify before Congress today about that pesky torture memo.

Not one of those Senators apologized for doubting that he could separate his religious beliefs from his official duties. Yet if that memo isn't proof that he can, I don't know what is. There he was, as Christian as they make them in his church, a man Jesus probably talks to personally, who when his President asks him to figure out how much torture the US can get away with and still be legal, he does not cite chapter and verse about turning the other cheek. He does not tell the President or the American people to look for the plank in their own eyes. No. He puts aside his Savior's bleeding heart and has his staff figure out justifications for physical and psychological torture.

This is a man who knows how to separate his beliefs from his job. When you have a guy like that on the job, you don't need a Constitution.

P.S. Just to show I ain't biased, I will say I disagree with him on covering the boobs of Justice in his Department of Justice. Clothes is not really to cover nakedness. And clothes is not even really to keep us warm except in winter. Clothes is there to make nakedness more interesting in the Department of Hanky-Panky. The boobs of Justice should not be something tyou think about stripping and kissing. Not to mention, a playful bite on the nipple when they're made out of marble might break a tooth.
10:13:16 PM    comment []   Wisebabe Website

I went to an art opening with a friend. My friend is an artist, so she don't have no money, and I guess she wanted to fill up on the free drinks and mixed nuts. She also thinks I need more cultural activities, fashion being shallow and art where you stand around looking at things you don't understand with people wearing intentionally bad haircuts being deep.

The gallery was called RAID and right inside the door was the first installation. It was a wall of pictures cut out of magazines of that girl from Sex in the City. Years worth ot fashion magazine and celebrity magazine pictures. Apparently this artist buys celebrity picture collections on Ebay and then instead of pasting them on the wall of her bedroom like the girl selling them prob'ly did, she put them on the wall of a gallery and made it art.

Next to it were several wall size portraits of beautiful women. Like a fashion magazine cover. Next to that was a series of men in drag, aiming for that look that comes naturally to a girl like I. I turned to my friend and pointed out her art was imitating me.

So we had a few dry roasted nuts on our way into an installation room painted all pink and gold and baby blue and saw the cutest unicorn except that it had Owen Wilson's face. Its intestines were filled with doll funiture and it was surrounded by cuddly-looking space aliens doing Munch's scream. My guess is the artist's mother never let her play with Barbie dolls, Barbie and her clothing being shallow. Still, being an artist is as good a way to deal with such childhood trauma as psychotherapy, and if you don't make money at it, at least it don't cost $250 an hour.

The unicorn, by the way, the one with Owen Wilson's face, it costs $5000, if you're interested. You probably can't take it home till the show's over, though.
11:58:28 PM    comment []   Wisebabe Website