recession? Amateurs!
recession? Amateurs!
Who is that in the picture? Tell us in the Comments
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they know what a recession is….
“I may not have a lot of money, but what do I have? A gratuitous crotch shot!”
Rickets does that to a boy…
Rickets=gratuitous crotch shot? Huh, who knew.
Definitely kids (limb to torso ratio showing still growing). Possibly rickets. But also a gratuitous crotch shot as well (look at his knees–he’s laterally rotated at the hips).
Either that or his barrel is too big for him to sit on.
It’s a prerequisite to work for Larry Flynt…
Rickets or a crotch shot?
Rickets first, then the crotch shot.
MAX!!!!! *hugs and smooches* You’re back!
Yes I am! Work’s been slow, so the eyes of big brother have been
watching closer than normal. So Ive been laying low…
OH! And… *HUGS and smooches*
Those b@astards, making you work! I’m sure they’ll regret it when your plans for world domination come to fruition.
God Id hope so, I might hire some of them on in my finance department
they at least know how to keep a business open during a recession.
They’re so small, they look like kids…
They could very well be. Child hobos were very common.
The one on the right (smoking) is a kid. Look how small his hands are.
The other one, I’m not so sure about. He’s a bit bigger and doesn’t have a childlike face.
or they could be carnies… carnival folk have small hands…
…and smell of cabbage.
Are they women?
Bang on – that’s what I think too – girls, not boys. Judging from the clothes of the right one (piping and embroidery on the jacket) gypsies. Dressed up as boys to avoid being pushed into girls’ roles – hence also the exaggerated pose to look ‘manly’ I think *grins*
Sadie and Isabella were the best of friends. When hard times came and the factory where their Poppas worked went out of business, they decided to go out into the world and seek their fortunes. Sadie said that if they were disguised as boys, they’d be safer and get better jobs. Isabella found some old clothes in a trunk, left from her brother Isaiah, who never came home from the Great War. This picture was taken right before they set out on their way.
I was thinking more of a Yentely story…
Word. I’m reading Grapes of Wrath for my Language and Composition class, and it makes all our bitching about a recession seem ridiculous.
It’s only just started… give it time to bite…
Obama hasn’t had a chance to really screw things up yet
Generally speaking, any governmental intervention only succeeds in exacerbating a current trend, so a valid point… 8 years of Bush’s insanity and Cheney’s general propping up his executive status at Haliburton set the trend admirably, now it’s a matter of riding it out… Pretty much anything the next admin does will make it worse before it gets better… and even then it’ll be thrashing around until 2040, based on the last recession of this depth and type.
The New Deal of the 30s worked well enough. The US markets were back at full strength by 1934, while the (then) fiscally conservative Australian markets didn’t get out of recession until 38/39.
This all won’t matter when the Zombies attack..
Is that what the new GOP, led by Sarah “the Saint” Palin will choose to replace the dead Elephant?
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle got me to stop eating hot dogs…
It’s not that bad anymore. Although, when mechanically deboned meat is being piped into a large (read: 5 feet tall and four feet across) cardboard box, it looks like dog poo.
Wow, thanks for sharing that image.
And no, I’m not squicky about where meat comes from, but these charming thoughts on mechanically processed meat make me long for the days of real neighborhood butchers.
LOL. Being in the poultry processing industry, I can vouch for the fact that most people have the wrong view of it. It’s extremely clean and extremely efficient. I just have a completely unfair predudice against mechanically deboned meat (versus hand deboned) because I’ve had to deal with the people running the machines. Bunch of nimrods, especially at the plant where I work.
Just how does one “mechanically debone” a chicken?????
It depends on what part of the process you’re talking about, lol. At the plant I work at we hand debone the breast and tender meat, and cut the wings off by hand. Then the skeleton that’s left over still has some meat on it, so we send it to MDM (mechanically deboned meat) where it is ground down, the bones are removed, and the remaining meat is mixed with salt and preservative. Then it’s mixed into a paste, sent through a pipe that gets the meat down to less than 40 degrees, and put into the afrementioned box. Then we ship that to whatever hot dog and baloney producer has ordered it, and they do what they want with it.
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It’s really not that bad, the meat in baloney and hot dogs is really just left over breast meat, but the process LOOKS nasty
Yeah…don’t watch the creation of sausage or laws. Either process is messy! (forgot the source, but a classic).
Otto von Bismarck, IIRC.
That is the one thing that’s great about down here. We still have local butcher’s everywhere, not just at the grocery stores.
Wow, nesting fail!
.. or not.. sheesh!
TRULY!! We candy-arses think we’re suffering when we have to opt for a smaller screen HDTV.
Ah, but that’s the American dream…
The trouble with most dreams is the wakefulness afterwards.
Point well made, rhorho. We still have it waaaay easy compared to what our parents (mine were born in 1914 and 1929, respectively) and grandparents did, with far more opportunities.
My dad was born in 1927, mum 1928. My Grandfathers were both steel men (a moulder and a locomotive driver and shift lead keeping the furnaces working).
Maternal Grandfather (loco driver) managed to not only work punishing shifts, but worked two allotments and raised chickens to supplement income. He’d trade breeding hens and eggs for a small whole pig, that my grandmother would then process nose to tail for the five in the family…
There was barter replacing money, two pullets for a rabbit, 2 lbs of potatoes for a shoe repair… then my Grandad bartered up a set of cobbler’s tools, and could then repair shoes himself… so that supplemented the family food by doing it for the ten-foot as well as my lot… money being kept for rent, gas, electricity and water.
These days, we have it easy… although I’d paid off my mortgage early, and could, if hard times really come a knocking, survive quite well, since my parents didn’t raise any of their boys to be either dumb or impractical when it comes to being a jack of all trades…
Master of any?
)
in the case of a meltdown that reduces us to a pre-technology culture… not really.
Well, if the squirrel hits the fan, economically, being a master isn’t the point. Being able to keep body and soul together, and shoes on the feet IS the point!
when you’re in dire need of shoe repair, it’s easier to walk a mile to a patch job, than a hundred for a master
Wow–You just brought a wonderful memory back to me. My grandfather was a cobbler/leathersmith. At his funeral, one man stood up and said that, during the Depression, my grandfather would repair work boots for free, saying that he didn’t want to keep a man from working. When offered payment, he would simply say, “Let’s wait until the times are better.”
Daddy’s father was a shoemaker, too, among his many other jobs. At a certain time, he had his own shop, but I think it vanished in the Great Depression.
I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m sure he recovered. People were more resilient back then, yes?
Oh, yeah; Grandpa had several other jobs and lived a full life. That side of the family definitely were a tough bunch, who had all kinds of jobs, plural, back then — except for one great-uncle who ran away from home at 13, hitch-hiked around the country, and rode the boxcars.
Good to hear your Grandpa did well. What happened to your great-uncle?
He eventually joined the merchant marines. I remember him as a very big man with a very loud voice, and hands like cast iron to pinch my chubby cheeks with. He had a big tattoo of a ship on his chest, and when he flexed his muscles, it looked like the ship was sailing on waves. He also had a tattoo of a hula girl on his bicep, and when he flexed his arm, he could make her dance.
How fun was that? What a cool great uncle to have as a pup!
Your Grandfather shows the greatness of spirit and mind that all human beings should possess. He must have been a great man.
I thought so, of course! It was nice to hear somebody else think so, too.
My folks were born in 1922, my Dad’s Dad worked at anything that he could, starting in the PA coal mines at age 13, and into just about any job in NJ that he could do — died of black lung before I was born, my Mom’s Dad was a steelworker upstate NY also died young in the early 60’s Grandma made parts for submarines, along with an aunt– times were really hard then, my folks (both of them) Europe to fight WWII, many uncles went to the Pacific and Europe — that generation worked hard, Mom’s still here, times arn’t the same, by a long shot, but do we need to relearn that lesson again?
I remember during the ’70s when we had that big recession, my grandmother remarked that it couldn’t be that bad because in the Depression we had men coming around willing to do chores for a bowl of soup.
(My great-grandfather was a big man, about 7 feet tall. One day a tramp came to the door and asked, ‘Lady, my shoes are falling apart. Does your husband have a pair he doesn’t wear much?’ Great-grandma said, “I’d love to help you, but he wears a size 14, and I think they’d be way too big for you.”
Or as Swedish historian recently said in an interview (loosely translated from memory):
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“Well, worse things have happened, like the bubonic plague.”
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I can get really annoyed at the idea that everything’s relative and “if you’re not The Worst Off Ever you aren’t allowed to complain”, but yeah, some times it’s good to find some sort of dictionary and look up that pesky “having a perspective”-concept.
Ah. Why do I always see the missing words and things after I post, and never while proofreading? Feh.
It’s the typo fairies that steal the words to make a castle for their queen…
Ah. I shall go buy a fairy swatter!
Or leave out a bowl of milk to distract them?
Hmmm… It’s that easy? I wonder what the neighbours would think of a bowl of milk in the stairway?
)
My garden gnome is really good at keeping the faeries…uh…occupied. Sometimes he goes missing for an entire weekend, then comes dragging back, covered with faerie dust. As silly as it looks to hose off a gnome, none of my words go missing. Just saying.
Sounds like the gnome is having a good time, at least!
Yeah, but he’s unpredictable. I shudder every time I hear a cat scream…
Yes, this. After watching what my best friend from college went through the past few months, I have a new standard for whingers. Are you in the ICU trying to recover from four brain-stem strokes? Is your wife? No? Then pull up your big girl panties and keep moving.
Oi! How do you know they are big!? *stares around nervously for sneaky webcams*
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But yes. Well, it really does suck to, for example, lose your job (which is happening all around here now at least), but … All in all, all of us here are pretty fecking well off (which I base on: a) we have computers, even if only at work and b) we have time to waste minutes/hours/days on this site).
Would it be fair to say that in your country, losing a job is a temporary setback, but not a tragedy, due to programs to help transition to another job? I.E., job loss does not equal going hungry and losing the roof over one’s head?
Right now, honestly, I think we’ll have to wait and see about that. But yeah, our social safety nets are pretty well developed. People won’t lose a roof over their heads, but they may have to get a smaller and leakier roof. People won’t go hungry, but there’ll be a lot more porridge and a lot less cheezburgars, so to speak. It can still be a tragedy on a personal level, though.
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I mean – I think that there’s a fair amount of futility to weigh one person’t misery against another one’s, because for the one being miserable, whatever the reason is, it’s still very real. But still, some times a little bit of reality checking can be in order, if not for anything else so at least for your perception of your own happiness.
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I went through a phase of ‘Unless you’ve had to withdraw feeding for a loved one, take a big steaming cup of STFU…’ I’m a lot more tolerant of idiots these days.
Wow. If this is your tolerant of idiots phase, I’d hate to see what your threadside manner was like previously! :^D
“I’m a lot more tolerant of idiots these days.”
)
Yeah… I reached a point where I realized that my life was much nicer to lead if I didn’t get too worked up about the General Idiocy Of People.
Bob Dylan looks so young in this picture!
Aw, how does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown…
You probably could understand what he was saying/singing then, too. It’s kinda sad that so many people obviously didn’t recognise him.
caption fail get a sense of humour dick wad
wow you’re nice
all that money his mother wasted on the Charm School… there again, he passed out higher than I did
The fact that you passed tells me that you must have charmed at least one person. Besides, I’m guessing it’s hard to balance a book on a bald head…
ba da da dum – click-click
*giggles*
There’s a joke about ‘passing out’ on the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t come up with it without sounding like I’m plagiarising from Douglas Adams.
Stupid wordpress! We hates it for ever!
There’s a joke about ‘passing out’ on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t seem to come up with it without sounding like I’m plagiarising from Douglas Adams.
Aww, crap…now I want to go play the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game! Thanks a lot. ; )
My life is but to serve, m’dear.
*squawk!* ….but to serve!!!!
Patience, Iago……
St. Andrew’s day today. Guid times…
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I love holidays! Please to tell us what this St. Andrew’s Day is about? What do you do for it? *waits expectantly*
St. Andrew was the first of Jesus’ disciples to be called. It was he who brought his brother to Jesus; his brother was Simon, called Peter. It was he who brought the boy with the loaves and fishes. It was also the one who brought the Greeks to see Jesus.
He is patron of the city of Constantinople (Istanbul/Byzantium), of Russia, and of Scotland.
Didn’t the Brits add his cross to the Union Jack after they conquered Scotland?
It was less of a ‘Conquer’ and more of an arrangement by which the British promised to stop having Catholics on the throne or PM and the Scot got shafted…
IIRC the UK is not actually as old as the US, in terms of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland… 1800…
Wiki covers the minutae, but I’d not say it was that anyone conquered anyone…
I look forward to the whole thing being found to be non-binding and we can deport Gordon Brown back to where he belongs… although I think a lot of Scots wouldn’t want him… Maybe just exile to Rockall…
I asked a dear friend in Edinburgh what she thought of the home rule movement generally and her response amounted to: Why bother? We’re already running the whole UK. ;^)
It would seriously screw up their funding… but I’m all for it… they can deport all the English they like, just let us send back Gordon…
I’m no advocate of the death penalty, but there are times I’d like to see his head displayed on Tower Bridge…
How much of it, really, is him doing a terrible job rather than being handed a terrible situation? If the UK situation is anything like the US, the groundwork was laid for the current mess years and years prior.
I’m heading to Scotland in June with my family to trace our ancestry…any recommendations for things to do in Glasgow?
Drink. And avoid anything served in a sheep’s stomach.
Ah, you’re a Tory, aren’t you? The Tories would love it if we seperated: get that pesky red/yellow heartland somewhere where it can’t affect conservative votes.
Devolution has nothing to do with “deporting” the English. The SNP are not anti-English but pro-Scottish. Independence is not about mindless racialists driving out the sassenachs and blaming everything on them. It is about allowing Scotland to regain reserved powers and control her own troops and international issues.
There seems to be an attitude in the south that the English are somehow losing out because of the devolved parliament. You aren’t. If Salmond chooses to cut prescription tax for OAPs it is because he has cut funding from something else.
Anyway, if Scotland seperates, I don’t think we will be the ones to suffer.
Ach!
*gets whiplash from cringing too much*
I spelt “separate” wrong….
Twice!
separateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparateseparate
Sorry to stir up a hornet’s nest, being of Irish decent I couldn’t resist, but I do agree with Scottish autonomy, provided it doesn’t weaken the nation as a whole — there was a good reason that the USA went away from the Article’s of Confederation.
No conquering involved. Longshanks already tried that and it didn’t last long. A few greedy Scots nobles ignored the common people and sold Scotland to England (which really just wanted a secure northern border) for £398,085 and 10 shillings. The kirk let it happen when they were assured that they could still be presbyterian and wouldn’t be taken over by the Church of England.
A history book from the 1980’s has that as the end of the nation. Now 21st century Scotland has her own parliament so you never know….
There was an interesting post on Making Light about the Darien Scheme, a disastrous attempt to establish a Scottish colony in Panama that wreaked such havoc on the economy that the Scots were essentially forced into the deal you’re talking about here. The idea of the Darien Scheme succeeding is grist from an interesting speculative fiction mill indeed……
Everyone in Scotland suffered from the Darien scheme. Not everyone wanted union. The Kirk was appeased but there was nothing for the north, where presbyterians were a minority. The rich got commercial equality.
What happened to “not for glory, riches or honour we fought”?
The nobles got peerages, the MPs got pensions. The commoners stayed poor.
It was the King of Scotland who inherited the English throne when his cousin the childless Queen of England died. Not the other way around.
Until the reign of his grand-daughter, England and Scotland had separate parliaments and were considered separate countries sharing the same monarch; at that time they were merged as the Kingdom of Great Britain. The new flag compounding the old flag of Scotland (a white saltire on a blue field) and of England (a red cross on a white field) was promulgated then. This is called the Union Jack.
In 1800, Ireland was merged with Great Britain as the United Kingdom, and the Irish flag (a red saltire on a white field) was added, to form the present British flag.
I thought Argent, a saltire gules was for St David of Wales. Have I got that mixed up?
We should put a Welsh dragon on the flag!
I’m always pro-dragon!
A dragon juxtaposed with St George’s cross. That should start some lively discussion!
That would be cool!
Yeah, but do we get presents?
Don’t do much, just some trad. music and stuff. Still, any excuse for a ceilidh band is a good excuse!
What about the day off of school? Do you get that? I love a band as well, although I’m not too clear on what kind of bands you’re listening to for the event.
A ceilidh band is a dance band that plays traditional Celtic music – jigs, reels, hornpipes, and in Scotland you can add in strathspeys and a few other things. :^)
Sweet!
Back to the subject of a ‘recession’…… I’ll believer there actually is a recession and things are really going down the tubes when each new film put out by Hollywood stops making millions at the box office each week. If money is so tight, where do people get it to spend on movies?
Movies are a form of escapism. They were immensely popular during the Great Depression of the 30s, when (most) people had even less spending cash than they do now. That having been said, movie theaters (as opposed to the studios that make movies) are taking a hit from cable, video rentals, netflix, etc.
Also consider the US population is about 300,000,000. Average ticket is about $8, so if just 5% of the population sees a movie while it’s in theaters, that’s $120,000,000, plus whatever other royalties it may accrue from sponsorships and merchandising if applicable.
Where do parents get the money to buy their kids fifty-dollar bears over at my store? (Seriously…I had a grandmother spend $106 and change on a bear for her granddaughter yesterday. And then she spent $10 more on a bear for Toys for Tots!) Some things people will find money for no matter what, especially keeping their kids happy.
Having a kid changes your whole decision making process, seriously. I still don’t get spending over $100 on a bear, but when there’s something that would make your kid smile, especially if they’ve been going through hard times lately…well, suddenly it occurs to you that there are some things you can put off a while for yourself, you know?
That’s awesome. I’m a bit (well…maybe a lot) young to become a mama now, but I really want to have kids when I’m older. That kind of connection is something I can’t even imagine now. In the meantime, I can spoil my coworkers’ kids rotton. : )
I agree, kids will change your whole perspective. I think my ex and I did a pretty good job on teaching our kids the concept of value. They were never the kind that had to have the latest mega-dollar shoes (a la Nike, Adidas, etc.) or clothes or whatever. In fact, they pretty much took it to a whole new level by refusing to wear anything that had a logo on it saying, “We’re opposed to supporting bloodthirsty corporations!” It was enough to give this old Republican an aneurism!
Aww…adorable! Give them a hug for me, okay? This hippie chick definitely approves. : )
They would actually cut the labels off their shirts and pants to avoid any association with “Corporate America”. Alas, they have been assimilated and now work for Citi Group. I think I liked them better as renegades.
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I’ll be sure to pass along the hug, although I’m sure they’ll probably say, “Why are we getting hugs from people off the internet, dad? Have you gone nuts?!?”
Resistance is futile after all? Ah well. Whatever works for them, right?
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Ah, just tell them I’m 17 and blonde (well…dark blonde) and they’ll stop asking questions. ; ) How old are they, by the way?
Both are 22..
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Internet matchmaking.. gotta love it!
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Although, they’re in the process of maybe moving to Australia. That’s not a deal breaker, is it? hehe
Hm…I think they have laws over here that would make that relationship a little tough. *ponders* What’s the age of consent in Australia?
Geez, I’m not really sure, but yeah, there could be issues concerning age. Oh well, you sound like an great girl!
Hm…did PK eat my post?
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What I said was, thanks! ^///^ You’re not too shabby yourself!
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And besides, age is just a number, right?
It’s 16 in Britain, 15 in France. I don’t know what would happen if they tried to make it 18 here…
Hm…what am I doing over here, then? I could be in Europe drinking and leading a life of debauchery!
(Ears swivel and orient towards Kuromisa)
Hippy chick?!?
Ooh, didn’t catch the age, sorry.
Ha ha, I’m a later-generation hippie chick. My favorite teacher, who actually was a hippie chick in the good ol’ days, has christened me so. I wish I’d been alive in the ’60s.
Huh, my hippie teacher made us sit in the leaves and sing Time in a Bottle over and over again in between discussion of Dandelion Wine. There were spiders out there. And did I mention Time in a Bottle? *grumbles*
My kid hasn’t gone quite as anti-corporate as all that, but her idea of a fashion statement is a $20 pair of high-top Chucks with mismatched shoelaces. :^D
Sounds like my boys. “Hey, wanna go to the Foot Locker and get some shoes?” “Nah, how about Pay-Less?”
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I mean really, Pay-Less?!?! Of course who am I to complain, it saved me a heck of a lot of money!
I may be way off, but this photo reminds me of ones taken around the turn of the last century by Jacob Riis, a photojournalist who wrote a book called How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890). Googling “Riis” in the images section will render many examples of his photography, including many similar portraits.
If you like his pictures, you may want to check out either of these books: “The Good Old Days — They Were Terrible!” and/or “Low Life”. Both of them are nonfiction books about the Gangs of New York era. The former is more lighthearted than the latter, but both are fairly appalling.
Thank you for the leads!
)
Our recession is on a completely different level from the Great Depression, such that the two can’t exactly be compared. Labor laws were vastly different. The population was notably smaller. Employer standards weren’t nearly as demanding as they are now. And technology has changed the market significantly.
Nowadays we have 20% compound interest rates, scams around every corner, and employers getting pickier as the job market dwindles and the applicant pool grows with each day. Jobs that demand bachelor’s degrees and four years of experience are only offering $12/hr in some fields. Granted it’s not as physically detrimental as children working in mines and people being used in the absence of canaries, but atleast some form of work was available. And the result is still several million able-bodied, unemployed and thus uninsured. Lose the house, lose the health. The next stats to spike will be a rise in the homeless population and free clinic visits. From there it’s the death rate, both health-related and suicidal.
Something to watch would be the spending this holiday season and the effect afterwards. I’m fairly sure there will be a fair amount of businesses going out of business after the holiday season, because they depend on sales and just didn’t get enough.
Not that it takes away from the lol, but I don’t think these are two poor depression era Americans. Just from looking at their features and cut of their clothes, I think these are two relatively well off depression era indigenous Bolivians. Possibly some other Andean culture.
I would disagree with that – look more East-European to me. Balkan most probably. Those people have, like many Europeans of that age, emigrated to the US in search of a better life, which wasn’t always that easy to come by anyway…
Anyone else think the hobo on the left looks like Bob Dylan????
Then again, if I learn to read through the thread completely, I would see that someone else already did…d’oh! *smacks forehead*
Bob Dylan on left, Sean Penn on right, early days.
Ahhh… both of these guys smell better than either Dylan or Sean Penn on one of their bad days….
Bob Dylan and Steve McQueen.
Anybody else think that the guy on the left somewhat resembles John Belushi?
Awesome comment thread.
My paternal grandmum & her 4 sibs (Sweden) were put into indentured servitude….in the 1800s. Sweden, pre “Socialism”.
My maternal grandfather (emigrated from Lithuania), born in 1865, did well in
real estate in Chicago in ’20s, lost it all in Depression. Still lived to 74.
Yours & my lives are rife with such tales of debacles past. Just a thought.
This is great…:3