What'd I miss? And G-d Bless Eleska

I've was out of town, and then celebrating the new year, which is the Year of the Kreplach. Meanwhile, I stop blogging, and the whole world goes to hell. Financial markets crash, Sarah Palin puts together a coherent sentence, the Brewers make the playoffs, Child develops a crazy multicolor rash from putting everything within reach into his mouth...a simple e-mail would have sufficed, Planet Earth.

But first things first: last night's vice presidential debate blew. Boooorrrring. Biden didn't call Palin "little lady," and Palin didn't freeze at the first mention of Afghanistan. Sure, she was tight, but this is just the fourth time she's appeared before a camera, right? I mean, she wasn't a news anchor or anything. She hasn't held any sort of executive position before, you know?

She used the word "maverick" almost as often as she talked about "how we do tings up dere, in Eleska." She was like a Bears Superfan, except without the gigantic swinging belly.



Biden, for his part, did not snort in derision, at least into the microphone. And he also didn't screw up too many facts, which is a nice switch for him. But all he had to do was not get in the way of the McCain snowball, now gaining force as it rumbles further down the mountain.

If I could sum up the past few weeks of polling, it would go thusly: "Huh, Palin is a chick! And she's hot! That's cool, I like hot chicks. Whoa, when she opens her mouth, she sounds like George Bush. I may be drunk, and about to have the bank foreclose on my house, and watching my nest egg disappear by the second, but I don't think I like George Bush. Let me get out my 401- wait, where did that go? Well let me check my medical insur- no, can't afford that either. Wow, Bush is a DICK! Palin must be a dick too!"

So that's settled.

I went to business school as an undergrad, majored in finance. So everyone in my major classes wanted to be an investment banker, because that's where the money was. Lots and lots of money, for lots of crazy hours, but hey, it's a buttload of money, right?

And now the investment banks are gone. Sure, Goldman is still there, and JP Morgan, but they're not i-banks anymore. Now they're... something else, I guess. Either way, I just feel bad for the guys coming out of my program this year. Where will they go if they want to be gigantic douches? Not everyone can be a hedge fund manager, and accounting is not nearly so flashy. And law school, while rife with douche, takes more work, and Daddy only said he'd pay for college, so that cuts out grad school.

I guess the thing we should be concerned about is all that douche overflowing into other sectors of the economy. So if you're parking valet gets all snooty about parking your Civic, just take a few breaths before stiffing him on his tip. Remember, just a month ago he was making 500K and snorting coke off silicon tits in a Soho martini bar.

I'm not going to even bother going into the whole collapse, mostly because I have no idea whether it was because of deregulation or encouragement by the government of banks to increase their subprime mortgage business so poorer people could own their own homes. All I know is that the market lost $1.2 trillion dollars of imaginary value last week, and that's not a good thing.

So if you could all check under your imaginary couches, and in the depths of your pretend purses and dream glove compartments, I'm sure we can find that money. Maybe we can even give some of it back to my old classmates. I don't know about you, but I'd like the guy parking my car not to have a death wish.