How does it feel?

[asakiyume]

On Marketplace, they said they have a place on their website where people can write in how the economy feels to them.

Well.

I think it's kind of dry on top, but damp underneath, and there are prickles at the edge that ooze if you break them, and that stuff gives you a hella rash if you get it on you.

How about you? What does it feel like to you?

Comments

[selidor]

Economy as weird fungal growth for the win.

[serialbabbler.livejournal.com]

Scratchy, like a heavy wool blanket with lots of moth holes in it. It also smells of mildew.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Definitely got that mildewy, economy smell to it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Good side: long-lasting mycelium sends up fruiting bodies even after long dormancy! Bad side: creepy as heck.

[marycatelli]

Feel? I don't know. I just notice that the selection of calendars seems lackluster.

It seems every recession shakes out the weaker selling ones. And -- sigh -- even the gorgeous ones never return.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Calendars as economic indicators--I like it.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Squamous and eldritch, with the occasional tentacle rising from the deep.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This would make an excellent economic indicator too. I can just hear it on NPR, "And today three eldritch tentacles were sighted emerging from the icy, oily depths, indicating irrational exuberance on the part of the one percent and quailing and trembling in their huts on the part of the ninety-nine."

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Much better poetry than Consumer Confidence.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

Over-oily. :(

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yep, that sounds greasily correct -_-

[sovay]

How about you? What does it feel like to you?

Like five o'clock with insomnia.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And based on your most recent entry, I was going to suggest it probably feels like being asked to drag a boulder using a shoulder strap with sharp spikes in the strap that dig into you as you pull.

[rustica.livejournal.com]

I don't know about *feel*, but I sure can't dance to it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Economy: arrhythmic as hell.

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

The economy feels like a very large water balloon in one's hand, rolling to the left and the right, seeking the ground that it might burst. If one grasps it too tightly to keep it from falling, it might also burst.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent analogy of the risks in both directions.

[maryvictoria.livejournal.com]

It gets all over you and can't be washed out with normal household detergent. Every time I find a smear of market on me I groan as I know it's going to mean months of mental cleansing. Last time the stain totally ruined my karma and I had to buy another one.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

"Don't come into the house with the market on your shoes! Wipe that stuff off on the mat!"

[maryvictoria.livejournal.com]

Plus, it's a particularly virulent strain of market called 'neoliberal capitalism'

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I find the Economy is not too bad, maybe a little scratchy, and the leg room can be a bad tight. But I'd much prefer Business, if I could afford it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hear the drinks are free in Business :-P

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Like traversing an arête, several hundred feet up, with the cold wind gusting.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yep, that sounds accurate.

[galestorm.livejournal.com]

Meep.

In other words, how could it sound any different now that you've described it so well?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hee, I was just intrigued by how tactile we could make the economy. I like the various directions people have taken their answers.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

It feels like slogging through sticky mud as I watch my daughter struggle to find a decent paying job, and fail.

[shellynoir.livejournal.com]

I am watching so many of my friends struggle and suffer, and I'm reminded of the labrea tar pits, with the sweet water on top, and underneath the horror of "shareholder value."

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

"shareholder value" = a sanitized expression of greed before need.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Well, here's the damned thing: the way we're celebrating and enculturating private grasping reduces fruitfulness for everyone, including the privileged graspers.

It is good to be a freeloader among generous and productive entities. It is not especially good to be a possibly aggressive freeloader among possibly aggressive freeloaders-- not even if one's a well-heeled possibly aggressive freeloader.

N.B.: "Possibly aggressive" here means those who beat down labour and low-income persons. It does not here mean panhandlers or those receiving or needing socil assistance

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And for a lot of people in your daughter's position, it feels like thin ice and frigid water below, or like a scum of almost solidified rock over a bubbling pool of lava--depending on whether you like your torments freezing cold or boiling hot.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. That sure rings true.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I need to work more on the feel side.

What it looks like to me is a busy machine, less shiny than it was, spitting out bones-- shrinking and not noticing that it's shrinking.

ETA: One thing it feels like is a soup tureen of narrow sharp needles.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

YES. I was thinking about needles, too.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether there's been much entomology in your life. I am thinking of insect pins, which are long and very thin, and go into bare feet like WHOA!

[lorigami.livejournal.com]

soylent green.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, no doubt!

[dudeshoes.livejournal.com]

It feels OK to me until I pass one of the many homeless in Boston. Then it feels very uncomfortable.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah :-(

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

It's hard to tell with all the chains keeping it down.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Lots of cast-iron, invisible-hand-shaped chains.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

The economy feels brittle to me. Delicate. As if, if you touched it, it might crumble into number fragments.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh I hear you. It looks like something made from sugar crystals that's going to get eaten by hungry cats--or melt in the rain.