Being Grateful Always

Someone asked me today if I was going off my diet for Thanksgiving. Way ahead of you.

Um, The Post Office May Think I'm Too Dumb To Dress Myself

Well, to be fair, I was quite a late dresser, but still I could even wear tie shoes by the time  I went to work at the PO. Anyway, that's not the point, the point is that apparently Amazon sees something in me that casual acquaintances might miss: in my personal recommendations was a book by Umberto Eco and one by Haruki Murakami.  Uh huh, in your face postal Louis L'amour readers!

Strutting And Fretting

So, I haven't posted much lately, or shoveled snow, or anything much really, except work, eat, and doze on the couch. I've been working a lot of overtime lately because the route adjustments they made this summer were so poorly thought out. At a recent service talk, our manager said, (without singling me out for once) that if our customers asked why we're working so late, we cannot say, "Because I work for idiots." I was surprised she didn't single me out since that is a word for word quote of what I've been saying. We're supposed to say, that if they have questions, they should call the post office, well, not the local post office because she doesn't want to talk to a bunch of crybabies about why they're getting their mail long after dark ("it scares my kids"), but the toll free number where the operators will have no idea what the customers are talking about. There they'll receive a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Meanwhile, I'll "creep in my petty pace from day to day."
As Thanksgiving approaches, though, we do have some things to be grateful for. Costco, for example, has a coupon for Wheat Thins.  Later today, we'll  check out their holiday Doritos collection. We've already laid in a supply of Stove Top Stuffing. Lots of people will tell you that they can make better stuffing than Stove Top. These are the same people that will tell you that their fruitcake is different, and they're wrong. Stove Top has the ingredients you want, without adding the things that you don't. Honestly, if gizzards were meant to be eaten, they wouldn't be called gizzards, would they?

Our Living Room Was Designed By Temple Grandin

At least one pundit says that Americans have been distracted from their increasing powerlessness by shiny new toys. I don't know if that's true, but my iPhone 4s is now also a universal remote for our TV and DVR.

How Many Pinheads Can Dance On An Angel?

I liked that title when I thought of it. I wish I could have thought of a post to go with it, but economists will tell you, "You can't have everything."
As I understand last Friday's Planet Money Podcast, the twin pillars of modern economics are Maynard Keynes, a brilliant but dissipated scholar and bon vivant, and Friedrich von Hayek, a Nobel prize winning Austrian. Keynes believed that targeted government spending could make up for falling consumer demand to prop up the economy during a recession. Hayek believed that the best thing government could do was to stay out of the way of a self-correcting free market. Obviously, a case can be made for both approaches, since their acolytes have been debating since the 1930's.
What is so infuriating about the current crop of "conservative" Republicans, is that while claiming to be followers of Hayek, they are practicing targeted spending and tax cuts to the richest people in America. If low tax rates for the rich and financial deregulation are so effective, then why have they lead to disaster?