Dear Small Business: Thanks for the Memories

Independently owned shops and restaurants have always defined the character of a community or neighborhood. They are places you can visit only on that particular street, in that particular town.

My street is particularly defined by small independent businesses: coffee shops, bars, restaurants, Tibetan clothing and craft shops, herb shops, gift shops and pet food stores. As the recession deepens, my street's distinct charm is fading as more businesses go under. The Cat's Meow, a Hawthorne staple for over twenty years, is closing its doors. The two resident cats have to find new homes. My favorite Hawthorne restaurant, The Italian Joint, abruptly closed two weeks ago. Further west a pet food store and Christian store are also going out of business. How can these niche stores survive in this economic climate? Will my street, and streets like it in communities around the country, soon be home to more empty store fronts than shops? Main streets in small towns have long struggled against the superstores popping up outside of town. Why go the local drugstore when you can get your prescription for much less at Walgreens or Wal-Mart?

It's important to support small business because it is small business that defines our community's character. By supporting those businesses you support your neighbors and friends. You also support what makes your community special. From the smallest town to the biggest city, it is the small unique businesses that cultivate a sense of pride in community. Support your local small businesses....before the liquidation sale.

Why 24-Hour News Channels Will Make You Stupid

I whole-heartedly believe 24-hours news networks were the worst thing to happen to news since, well, talk radio. It's easy to immediately point to Fox News as a faux news channel, but I don't even think they are the worst offender. Watching CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN Headline News, and of course Fox, as a primary source of news will provide a brief overview of world and local events, but will not offer intelligent insight into those events. These channels are forced to compete with one another for your attention for 24 HOURS A DAY. Consequently, they fill their time covering irrelevant celebrity scandals and freaking people out. Everyday these channels provide hours of late night fodder for the Daily Show and The Soup. From Rick Santelli yelling on CNBC to the cast of Fox and Friends deep-fat frying Obama's budget, the Daily Show writers pretty much have their work done for them.

The truly frightening thing is that these channels are not just a major source of news for many, many people, but providing "insight" and "analysis" into those news stories and affecting viewers' opinions. Veiled as news channels offering commentary, these channels are little more than entertainment channels. Say you want about E!, but at least it's honest about its objectives: making you care about the Kardashians and Denise Richards. CNN reports on the same stories, but calls it "Breaking News" complete with a news ticker and colorful graphics. CNN was so bombarded with its heavy-hitting stories it had to create CNN Headline News, a channel dedicated to providing viewers snippets of 5 minute news clips.

So where should Americans turn for news? First, turn off the television. Next, turn on your computer and discover a whole word of podcasts. You can listen in your car, when you exercise, while at work, while cooking dinner, cleaning, etc and they are FREE. NPR and This American Life offer intelligent insight into world events, including international news and the economic crisis. The Planet Money podcasts are particularly good: they explain how banks work, the Treasury's plan, the Stimulus package, etc. Finally, magazines and newspapers still provide news. Picking up your local daily newspaper gives you insight into state, local, and national events as well as supports local news. Even Time is good - and it's made by the same company that makes CNN. Somehow something is lost when translated to a 24-hour news television station. The Economist is an amazing publication, although it is a bit pricey and dense for a weekly magazine. Fortunately, there are a lot of free sources online: for example, you can read most New York Times stories and op/eds online.

Television is an amazing medium and offers the viewer the entire package in a comprehensive news story: sound and visual. Unfortunately, when forced to provide programming for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, being more outlandish than your competitor brings in the viewers. Sometimes less is more. You're better off reading a newspaper and watching the nightly news than watching days of useless garbage and holograms on MSNBC and Fox.

Don't be stupid. Turn off these channels. Your brain will thank you.

I like Twitter.

There. I like it. I admit it. It's a weird little universe. At first I thought it was completely useless because I was only following three people (in Twitter world "follow" essentially means "friend") and I had nothing to add to the conversation. It's like jumping into a chat room. You feel like an idiot just twittering "Candice is tired" or "Candice is going to work". My day is pretty boring, so my status updates were also pretty boring.

Then I discovered Twitter's usefulness as essentially a message board. I starting responding to my friends, then added some new friends, including a few of my favorite comedians. It's interesting because the celebrities on there post what they are working on. My friends and I carry on several simultaneous "conversations" - all in 140 characters or less.

I think what I like best about Twitter is that I still only have like five friends (including my celebrity "friends") who twitter on a regular basis, making it a very effective means of communication. I don't have a phone with a data plan and can't access social networking sites at work, so if I had more Twitter friends I'd just be overwhelmed by the volume of tweets going back and forth.

So there. I'm a convert. It certainly doesn't replace Facebook, but is actually much more fun. Now all I need is an iphone.

SUPERHERO POWERS

After too much discussion and thought:

The best superhero power is the ability to turn into other stuff, namely animals. You are effective as a spy or could fight crime or destroy stuff. The power would have to allow you to turn into any animal and at any time. The only risk is if you lose your power while you are in animal form and then you are stuck as that animal.

The worst superhero power would be exploding arms. Your arms explode completely at random and the explosion isn't destructive like a bomb, but bloody and gross....like exploding arms. Also there's a big risk the arms would not grow back. It's a pretty ineffective superhero power.

Recessions are harmless too. Really.

As the recession deepens, I can't help but think Republicans hate poor people. No, wait. Everyone. They must hate everyone.

I know a lot of people who have been personally affected by the bad economic climate. I have friends who've been laid off, and my own job isn't secure for the long-term. My boyfriend and I luckily live in a tiny apartment and don't have a mortgage or children, but I do have a lot of debt thanks to my education and past spending habits. I don't feel like we're poor, but I do feel some loathing from the Republican Party.

There's a segment of the Republican Party that feels like if you've fallen on hard times it's your fault. They're right. It's your fault if you bought into the "American Dream". If you mortgaged your future on your $30,000-a-year job to buy a house in the suburbs, an SUV, i-pods for the kids, then you deserve to literally have the rug pulled out from under you and the front door locked. The car repossessed and the i-pods sold on e-bay (for pennies). You knew you couldn't afford that stuff, but you somehow allowed yourself to believe the spending was validated by the fact the banker gave you the loan for the house and the credit card repeatedly increased your limit.

The banks bundled your risky loan with other risky loans and sold them. The credit card company hedged its bets on making loads of money of your mostly interest-only minimum monthly payments. Stores and companies made money off the stuff you bought...everyone makes money as you spend, spend, spend. New companies made new products with new flashy commercials and you want, want, want. You thought you were living the American Dream. You had stuff and a house and a job. Then you lost the job, and the house quickly followed.

Now those same people who made you want, want, want and profited off your spending are blaming you for own irresponsible spending. It is your fault. It's my fault too - but it's hard to not be irresponsible when there are so many things out there to want and buy. I don't think we spenders should be "bailed out" or let off the hook entirely. I just want those Republicans out there who harbor loathing towards those who need help to see that the private enterprise they love so much holds a share of the blame.

Volcanoes are harmless.

I live around 50 miles from Mt. St. Helens. Mt. St. Helens is an active volcano. You may remember it erupting May 18, 1980.

The pictures above are of Mt. St. Helens before and after the 1980 eruption.

That's the funny thing about volcanoes - they erupt. We can figure when they'll erupt by using science. Science costs money. Sometimes private industry invests in science, because science can make money. Sometimes government has to invest in science, because the science doesn't make money. Studying volcanoes doesn't make a lot of money, so government has to invest in it, because no one else will. Which is funny because natural disasters like volcanoes cost private industry a lot of money - like logging companies, for example. Insurance companies could invest in such things I guess, but that's just so they know how much to charge people for insurance. I assume they'd rather not because studying volcanoes just to determine the risk of eruption for insurance purposes seems rather expensive. So it seems like this sort of responsibility lies with government. Investing in valuable science that private industry won't because it's not profitable seems like just the thing we'd want our government to invest in. To protect us. To protect our towns, our livelihoods, our health.

Instead of monitoring volcanoes, maybe we should be monitoring is the eruption of stupidity in the Republican Party.

Savannah Cat

Look at this cat. It would eat your Maine Coon for breakfast. It's called a "Savannah Cat".