Yeah, right.

I was talking about change in one of my posts.

Someone agrees with me. This is from BoingBoing - one of my favorite blogs. They talk about an article written by Marina Gorbis on how the corporate culture developed over dozens of years will be going through (or is? maybe it’s already happening) a profound change and the reasons why it is unsustainable.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/20/marina-gorbis-on-org.html

Also, from one of my favorite Twitter-ers:

Buy organic for the health, eat junk for taste.  Words of wisdom we all live by… oh yeah.

This story happened a few days ago but I didn’t get a chance to talk about it.

It was about 4:30 in the morning and our dog,  Cookie, was a bit restless. She was sort of fussing around in the hallway and then she let out a monotone “woof” as if to say “hey”. At first I thought she was just dreaming or maybe she needed to go out but a few seconds later, another “woof”, kind of muffled, kind of like saying “I know I have to bark now so I’m barking but, really, it’s just because I remember reading somewhere that this is what dogs must do”.

Now Cookie is anything but a vicious dog. If there was someone trying to come in, she would probably become their instant friend rather than chase them away. In any event, she did her guard dog duty and made a noise because someone was, indeed, at the door. We were awakened by the dog’s bark and a few seconds later we heard a knock on the door.

We both looked at each other and froze. Who on Earth would knock on our door in the middle of the night? (ok, towards the end of the night but, either way). I was thinking “sitting duck” and I’m pretty sure my husband wasn’t thinking “ham sandwich” either. Or at least I hope. Anything is possible.

Now I know that burglars don’t usually knock - that’s what I hear, I have never had the pleasure of encountering one in action. But still, when you had just been awakened really, really early in the morning, that’s the first thing that goes through your mind.

So we finally crack the door open (well, my husband did) and see this little old lady who says she’s lost.

She was our neighbor from a few blocks down the street and she has been battling Alzheimer’s for years now. This was the first time she wandered off and, for some reason, decided to knock on our door to ask for help.

Of course, there was no way this could have been our first thought but still, I feel a bit ashamed for having thought that we were being robbed by the Russian mob when I first heard the knock on our door.

I can’t help but think that, had we been in my little home town in Transylvania, my reaction would have been “someone needs help” and not “I’m going to die if I open that door”, but you never know how you’re going to react unless you find yourself in that position. It must be all those stories that we see on the 5 o’clock and 10 o’clock news every day talking about how families were found dead in the nice, quiet suburbs and all the interviews afterwords with neighbors saying “This is the safest neighborhood in the entire area!” and “I never thought this would happen in our town. Ever”. Well, I guess they were wrong, weren’t they.

So my husband ended up taking the lady back home to her worried husband who had called the police, the police arrived in less than 5 minutes (note to self: if you’re ever attacked, that’s how long you have to fight back) and it all ended well in our neighborhood. 

Still, knock on the door in the middle of the night is never good news. At least that’s what I hear.

There’s a guy standing on the corner of M and Wisconsin. Maybe there are several but, just like probably 98% of the passers-by, I only ever look at what he’s holding and not at his face. I generally try to not make eye-contact with people on the street handing out stuff so I can be less embarrassed about the fact that I’m a. not taking what they have to give out and b. not giving them any money in exchange (you can bet your daily Mocha that most of the guys hanging out at street corners want your money. Or at least part of it)

So, he’s usually standing there with a stack of magazines in his hand and some bumper stickers and I noticed a while ago that the stickers say “Stop bitching, start a revolution”.

I don’t know the guy’s name (I’ll ask next time) but he tried several times before to stop me to talk about his thing. I told him I’m not ready for a revolution and, in general, I’m not ready to stop bitching just yet.

Bitching can be really rewarding. You don’t like something you cannot change, the least you can do is bitch about it. Please give me the strenght to change what I can’t take and the mouth to bitch about it if I can’t. Or something like that.

However, today the guy actually caught me just as the light was turning red and, because there was a policeman in the intersection, I didn’t want to jaywalk so there I was, with the revolution guy, having to not only look at him but talk to him as well.

He was nice enough and started giving me the handout, but before he could speak I told him I’ve already been through a revolution and I feel like I’ve done my part so he really should give me a break. He looked at me puzzled and a bit scared and said “I’m sorry?” Just like that. With a question mark. Like he wasn’t really sure if he was actually sorry or not.

“Don’t be”, I said, “I love revolutions.”

He then asked me where I was from and I told him I was Romanian and that we had a bloody revolution in 1989 when people actually died and it was all very dramatic and exciting and life-altering. Everyone was in the streets, there was shooting, civilians took over the television broadcasts and random people would stop by to cheer and talk and cry, it was very chaotic and exhilirating at the same time and even though I was just a child, I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I have the feeling that this was all too much for the guy, he told me that he was sorry (again) and that I should check out their website www.zendik.org He also said that they take donations so I gave him $5 and started walking because the light had changed back to green.

Maybe he’ll go home and google revolution?

I’m sure there were plenty of signs that this entire shebang was going down the drain, right? I mean, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we’ve been spending too much, wasting too much, eating too much, working too much because we wanted too much overtime for too big a bonus, and so on.*

What we need is a paradigm shift. We need to forget how to be a consumerist society and try to be a more value-oriented society. Now this sounds cheesy and, yeah, using big words to say something obvious since everyone says we need to spend more money in order to rebuild the economy. (I’m doing my part by buying more lipstick and shoes) And for what it’s worth, yes, we should stop the panic (economic panic, swine flu panic, Air Force One flying over Manhattan panic) and get out and have some fun.

But at the same time,  things will probably never be the same again. There are just too many problems with the current model for us to be able to just go back to our old ways as if nothing ever happened.

It makes no sense for us to be able to buy cheap electronics and $1 food yet go bankrupt because we broke a bone and couldn’t pay the hospital bill. It makes no sense to be able to charge $3,000 worth of clothes yet be 6 months behind on our rent. There’s something wrong with this picture.

I hope that, if one good thing comes out of this current crisis, it’s the fact that we get back the excitement of buying a new TV (it should be an event, not another Tuesday) or the special feeling that we’re celebrating something when we’re going out to eat (I’m sad to say, I know Outback’s menu by heart).

Also, I just wanted to write this post because I love that fake Economist cover.

*Disclaimer: the too much thing is in comparison with, say, a less-rich country. Like, for instance the one I come from. Romania. It’s in Eastern Europe.

I moved here from Romania about six years ago without knowing that I was going to stay for this long. The first thing that shocked me was how big everything was compared to other parts of the world.

Well, maybe not Russia, things are big there too.

But, seriously, everything from roads to buildings, cars, grocery stores, furniture - everything is BIG. And what’s bigger than anything is food and people’s obsession with it.

I quickly packed on about 10 lbs in the first year even though I wasn’t eating any differently - or so I thought.  I can’t even say how many lbs I managed to gain - it will put me in a bad mood for the rest of my life - but I can safely say: too many.

I’ve always suspected that there was something different about food here, not only because there is a lot of it everywhere but also because everything is sweet. Check out sugarstacks.com to see just how sweet.

Apparently sugar makes everything better. (except for my back side, obviously)

Save me Dr. Atkins! You’re my only hope.

How some people manage to stay thin with all this sugar everywhere is a mystery to me.