Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

After spending nearly half the afternoon of my day off glued to my computer to see if Wall Street could start a new depression I left my warm apartment, passing the Kimmel Mausoleum as I often do. The Orchestra had just let out and lots of geezers were leaving, and four large vans from senior centers/senior communities/nursing homes were waiting. Later on South Street, passing a former bar that has reinvented itself as a "night club" I saw a bunch of guys with lots of impressive noisemaking equipment of the type Sweetwater sells, with lots of sliding controls and ugly-looking vents, and by golly if they didn't come in four vans identical to the ones at the Mausoleum, only they had no windows.

Further down South Street I passed a couple of empty storefronts, whether from bad mortgages or not I'd never know. but I could suspect. On the South Street pedestrian crosswalk over I-95 I looked at all the traffic going nowhere, and in the distance I spied what looked like a hot-air balloon that slowly morphed into a blimp, and soon after I realized Seligism was having its annual Festival for CEOs, and I thought, how many of those swine in the luxury boxes were friends to the people who mowed Lehman and AIG down, and who insisted on celebrating after doing the deed? How many of them would have hired the young geniuses whose work has brought HYER LURNING into further disrepute? How many of them would help try to shake down new stadiums out of taxpayers in the midst of a deep recession? They can always use Dubya's bailouts as an excuse.

Then I thought back to 1980, when the Phillies won their first Series. I remember there was definitely an electricity in the air. I sense none of that now though perhaps I'm just not noticing. I do know that when Lehman went bust I developed a gloom that hasn't quite lifted since, the sort of gloom I last had after 9/11, that didn't fully lift for almost a year; the unspoken fear that these idiot geniuses and craven frauds are bringing on The Depression to End All Depressions, and though thus far the damage still seems limited to where GREED IS GOOD the contagion slowly spreads each time the BIG C screams of PANIC!!!!! We all hope Wall Street's psychotics can control their urge for social experimentation; we further hope The Messiah can do something, anything; but we know how the hacks have already given Him superhuman powers that in the sunlight seemed all too mortal.

One last question: When The Lord Ascends will Dubya leave Washington under an assumed identity?