#176 - richly poor.

OMG guv'ment! you f'n suck right now. get it together! you've taken the issues of extending tax cuts & unemployment benefits & turned them into majors & miners in your neverending game of political stratego. ok fine, that was a lame analogy with lame wordplay. bad on me. ok fine, you're sticking to your guns. good on you. i can respect the fact that you're doing that. what i can't respect is the fact that on the republican side, you're pitting benefits to the rich against benefits to the poor in an effort to have your political party come out on top. you don't fuck with leaving millions of people in the lurch so that you can make sure that people who will survive just fine regardless still get theirs, y'know? i mean...what would jebus do?

for those who aren't up on what's currently happening with this whole ridiculous battle, here's my hurriedly-assembled analysis. let's start with the unemployment benefits. back in july, the president signed legislation that extended unemployment benefits for over two million people who had run out of benefits. that extension was only temporary though & two weeks ago today (11/30) it expired. the president & his party were all "the economy still sucks. nobody has jobs. let's make another extension." at the same time, at the end of this year the tax cuts that former president bush enacted are set to expire. obama was all for extending them but felt that the cuts for the wealthiest 2% were not only unnecessary, but quite expensive, so he was all "let's scrap that part of the tax cut."

since republicans love the wealthy, they were pretty pissed & were all "fine. if you do that, we won't let the unemployment extensions happen." eventually, obama gave in to the republicans' demands, pissing off the democrats in the process. i listened to the press conference that president obama had with reporters last week, soon after it was announced that he was cutting a deal with the republicans. he basically said that he saw that millions of people would lose their only source of income if he didn't compromise with republicans on the tax cuts for the wealthy right now & didn't feel that fighting the republicans on it was the right idea for right now...down the road, but not right now. still, as a result, last week vermont senator bernie sanders, an independent who votes with the democrats, filibustered the tax cut deal for eight hours. as of right now, shit's still stalled. nobody's getting tax cuts. sorry bout that, everyone. nobody's getting an extension on their unemployment benefits. sorry bout that, poor folk.

personally, i didn't grow up poor. i grew up middle class. sure when my parents first started our family they were just two kids in their early twenties who didn't have a whole lot of money, but for my entire childhood i always had a roof over my head. i never went hungry. i didn't get to do everything i wanted to do, but i got to do a ton of cool things through the years. so far, they've sent three kids through college. money was always tight, but they always made it work. as an adult, i haven't bought a house or started a family like they did, but i've managed to live a pretty fun life. i suppose i'm middle class myself, except for the few times over the years (now included) when i've survived on unemployment. my reason for bringing all this up is that i couldn't imagine having a family & a house & whatnot & being smack dab in the middle of the holidays when all of the sudden, [sad trumpet] my unemployment benefits run out. if that was the case & i looked at what's going on in d.c. right now, i'd probably be inclined to find the closest millionaire & punch him/her square in the jaw.

eat!drink!snack! rich person holiday tip: going crazy trying to select the perfect gift for that special someone in your life this holiday season? stop all your fretting POST-HASTE & just get them A FRIGGIN LEXUS. too poor? too bad. it's what rich people do. you want to be like the rich people, don't you? well, you'd better figure out how to afford a lexus lickedy split. christmas is just over ten days away, son. also, once you have secured said lexus, make sure to put an oversized bow on it too, cause that's festive. you wouldn't want to go through all the trouble of getting a lexus for your huggy bear snugglepuss & then screw everything up by forgetting the oversized bow. got it? good. now let's go out there & have a december to remember, people!

snack: chocolate mix skittles
drink: dogfish head theobroma

this is how poor people snack: they go down to the bodega & buy a bag of chocolate mix skittles. they're a flavor combo that skittles is trying to pass off as "new" even though they've been around since 2007. they're also the answer to the unasked question "why don't they make chocolate skittles?" i tried finding out a little bit more about them on the skittles website, but it's the biggest clusterfuck of a brain fart of a college dorm room puke stain of a forty-year old marketing exec who thinks he has a grasp on what's hip & social networking-conscious...or so i infer. it's ABSOLUTELY out of control & i have no idea where the product info resides. should i click on the monocle-wearing chicken? perhaps it's accessible via the photo of a corvette with a skittles license plate & a rainbow wolf on the hood? eventually, i reached a point where i just didn't care any more.

every bag contains five flavors--s'mores, vanilla, chocolate caramel, chocolate pudding & brownie batter. yeah, i don't know how vanilla = chocolate either but whatevs. out of the five, the chocolate pudding ones are definitely my favorite. they sort of taste like tootsie rolls. the chocolate caramel ones came in a close second, as i do love caramel. the vanilla & brownie batter ones are both acceptable but nothing special. on the other end of the spectrum, the s'mores ones are just plain nasty. there's not much of a chocolate flavor, but there is a weird aftertaste that i guess represents the graham & marshmallow used in s'mores...y'know, because graham & marshmallow taste just like plastic & milk duds. overall, the chocolate mix is an interesting skittles variation & the flavors are mostly good, but their artificiality is wholly unsettling.

this is how rich people drink: they pay $15 for a bottle of dogfish head theobroma, a beer that's brewed in an ancient aztec/mayan method & includes honey, cocoa nibs, cocoa powder, ancho chilies & ground annatto. dogfish head founder sam caligione loves making unique, complex beers & the theobroma's obviously no exception. theobroma means "food of the gods" & the beer's "a re-creation of the premier chocolate beverage of the americas, intended only for the gods, kings, and the elite." it's made in the spirit of the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink, a recipe that dates back to 1200 B.C. it's also one of dogfish head's "ancient ales" series, a limited brew that comes out in june, meaning i probably grabbed one of the last few still available from this year's batch. yay, me.

the first thing that struck me about it was that when i poured it into a glass, i was expecting a dark, chocolatey stout & instead got a beer that was light, opaque & orange in color. the most dominant flavor throughout is the honey, which gives the beer a subtle sweetness. unfortunately, i didn't notice any chocolate flavor or chili flavor at all. i'm sure they're in there, as the overall flavor has a certain complexity to it, but for my tongue, they were canceled out by the honey, which in itself wasn't extremely prominent...just the dominant flavor. for a beer made with a bunch of weird ingredients, it's definitely drinkable, which is cool. unfortunately, i'm not sure it was worth my $15. after all, my unemployment benefits should probably have been more intelligently spent. oh well...better to get slightly tipsy on expensive, crazy beer & pretend i can afford to, right?