Et Cetera

Last night was exhausting (in the best of all possible ways), so today is a good day for miscellany. I'm going to begin by acknowledging (and reminding myself) that I have not yet written about last Friday evening's words-cannot-begin-to-do-justice encounter with a bottom and his 420. Truly cosmic.


Last night, I hosted a thirty-eight-year-old bottom who had never had his ass eaten. The situation has been rectified. That rather lengthy encounter, which included an appearance by Judd, also merits its own entry, but I will note in passing that as we were finishing another pounding at 6:30 this morning, he told me that I'd given him four anal orgasms last night. I had figured three, but apparently the two that were close together were discrete events. Also, I got a few pictures of him in a Santa hat, but they weren't as good as the pictures of him in the shower. I dropped him off at his brother's house this morning. He was going to take his nephew to pre-school and help in gingerbread house construction.


I have still not settled on my own gingerbread construction project for this year. EFU suggested that I build a gingerbread version of one of the pyramids at Teotihuacan, and she has lots of pictures of them, but I'm not sold on the idea. It seems like a lot of pieces of gingerbread without any obvious reason for candy decorations. That means it would be fun for me but not so much for the kids. I wonder whether in Mexico they sell pyramid cake molds. Not that I would buy one. I just wonder.


In other holiday news, I have most of the major gift buying done for the kids and b&c. B&c gets back from Denver Thursday evening, and I reckon that he'll buy a Christmas tree on Friday. Normally, the entire weekend would be given over to baking, decorating, and purchasing, but this weekend, we'll be spending three hours and twenty-one minutes, plus travel time, watching the Metropolitan Opera's HD simulcast of Thais. Naturally, this situation raises (or elicits, but DOES NOT beg) the question: may one eat popcorn while watching opera in a movie theater? I suppose I can definitely have some during the intermissions. I'm also thinking that I should print or acquire some smaller versions of the Chagall murals. That's what I tend to look at during the intermissions when I'm watching the Met at Lincoln Center.


This whole Madoff hedge fund mess has resurrected my long-held conviction that our entire economy is basically one giant Ponzi scheme. Some of our largest financial commitments (most notably Social Security and Medicare) rely on the notion of sustained growth to remain solvent. But growth isn't endlessly sustainable in a world of scarce resources. There's a food chain/extinction analogy to be made here, but I'm too tired to think it through. It seems to me, though, that the focus on growth, growth, growth, has now taken us past the place where we can feed on plants and lower animals. Most corporations who want to continue to grow now do so by acquiring other corporations. Then they eliminate lots of jobs. When you get to the point where the only thing left for the carnivores to eat is other carnivores, collapse may be imminent.

Surely it's possible to move from a model of growth to a model of sustainability, but the transition can't help but be painful, and it will be most painful if those who are used to doing very well under the old model don't buy into the new one. Also, I haven't really noticed anyone who's got any power who's talking about moving us to a new model. Presumably a new way will emerge out of the ashes, but a whole lot of people are likely to suffer in the interim.