21 Percent

Good Lord... my shop figures for January are off twenty one percent from the previous January. Generally, I read the dismal retail news and smugly think - well, that's Wal-Mart. That's Gap. And then, I go about business as usual, knowing that my store (both Incarnation#1 1987-1997 and Incarnation #2 1995-present) has survived the following:

-Birth of a child
-Surgery
-Divorce
-Terrible divorce financial settlement in which I basically paid for the shop twice over in order to secure the exit of former husband
-Crazy Former Boyfriend
-Institutionalization of Crazy Former Boyfriend
-Crazy Former Boyfriend stealing many shop assets with stolen key
-Two Burglaries
-Numerous unsuitable and/or dishonest employees
-Twenty years of economic ups and downs and two Bush regimes

But until yesterday, I have never faced what the Wall Street Journal would call a "significant economic downturn affecting the retail market" with such a statistical dip in my own back yard.

This must be what recession looks like.

Plan for the weekend: slashing prices (at least a few).

NTD

R.I.P. Dixie Crystals Sugar Refinery of Port Wentworth, Georgia

NTD

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

NTD

Today I'm going to walk up to the courthouse and vote my hopes, not my fears.

NTD

The New York Times columnist William Kristol has spoken. On February 3^rd he told NPR/Fox News contributor Juan Williams the following:

Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women. The Democratic establishment - it would be crazy for the Democratic Party to follow an establishment that's led it to defeat year after year. White women are a problem, that's, you know - we all live with that.

I am offended on so many levels, but why should I be surprised?

Certain white men - such as Bill Kristol - just might be a problem, too.

NTD

Obama's Secret Weapon

It's all over, folks. Barack Obama now has the power to render every man helpless to resist his name on the Super Tuesday ballots.

Scarlett Johansson appears in the new Will.I.Am/Jesse Dylan promotional video for Barack Obama, looking as lovely and sincere and lust-inspiring as any actress this side of Angelina possibly can.

Every man I know has succumbed to Scarlett Fever in the past.

I'm sorry, Hillary. But Scarlett chooses to whisper the holy name of Barack. The Goddess has spoken. Resistance is futile.

NTD

Florida rocked, and an attentive reader might notice that I almost never ever use the term "rocked" which I would include in a list of Top Ten Annoying Overused Words in America, along with "awesome" and "sweet". But Florida in late January is warmish and wonderful, particularly when one scores a beach-eating highrise room featuring an ocean view and an always-available jacuzzi downstairs for fifty bucks a night. So Stewart and I did all the wrong things, like eating too much fried seafood and impersonating Giuliani supporters at a RonJon Surf Shop rally in order to photograph the top of Rudy's head as he rushed into the bus. As a dieting left-wing liberal who officially hates overdeveloped beachfront condos, Republican politics AND cable television, it was frightening to watch myself morph into the Ugly American Tourist so effortlessly. What the hell, it was fun. And you can bet that I will be perusing only the Democratic candidates on my state's touchscreen ballot next Tuesday. And No More Television, other than the endless stacks of VHS tapes now found in virtually every room of my house. And eating sensible food in sensible portions. And decrying developers and ugly tall buildings like I usually do.

NTD, who does not plan to use the word "rocked" again for the rest of 2008