Surviving economic meltdown

In about 1972 I used to live next door to a gay guy called Bill Johnson. Bill had bought himself a new pair of sheets for his bed, and in very queenly fashion had pitched the old ones right out the front door onto the verandah. I saw them there and picked them up. "Bill, what are these sheets doing outside on the verandah?" He said they were worn out. I pointed to the corners and said, "No they're not! Look at all the wear left in the corners." And Bill said, "I don't sleep in the corners." So I said, "But you can slit them up the middle and stitch the sides together." And Bill said, "Darling, you'd be adorable in the depression, but we're not in a depression now, and I've used these sheets and washed them and put them straight back on the bed every day for at least five years, and I think I deserve a new pair." And with that I took the sheets into my own place and did the "adorable" thing. It was another five years before those sheets eventually became furniture covers while I painted the bedroom. Every time I slit worn sheets up the middle and stitch the sides together, I think about Bill Johnson and wonder where he is these days.

March 2009. All over the western world, corporate parasites plead for their governments to bail them out of their self-made mess. These parasites are usually the same ones that routinely howl down any suggestion that their government should assist unemployed workers and their families to stay alive and well-nourished while the bread winner tries to find another job, all the while blaming the unemployed people for their own unemployment.

People like me really only ever had crumbs, so for us nothing is new in this day and age. Survival on "the smell of an oil rag" is one of the things I am bloody good at. I get it from my mother.