Money Archives
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How could anyone be opposed to gay marriage? Because I mean, darling, really some marriages are just sooo grim. A little waltzing in the moonlight, a little bubbly under the stars, a little gaiety - that's what all marriages could use. That's that settled. Shall we all have a cocktail?
Oh wait. Back to this millennium! There is another definition of gay marriage. Same-sex unions aren’t a regular part of the current landscape yet, but in California they just got a boost before getting stuck again.
Maybe I idealize gay marriage, but it seems to me that people who’ve had to fight for the right to marry might, at least on average, think more than straight couples about what marriage means before they undertake it. Not that, were it legal, there wouldn’t be numbers of gay couples too making idiots of themselves in Vegas.
But, raise your hands out there, who hasn’t attended a wedding that just shouldn’t have taken place? Everyone’s been to at least one, right? And you probably sent a gift chosen from a registry where a couple who’s been eating out of reused take-out Styrofoam boxes now wants dishes at $400 a place setting. And so roughly half of marriages end in divorce.
One big reason people marry mistakenly is because they want a wedding, not necessarily a marriage. Women want to be a princess for the day. And while the bride is often the one more obviously wrapped up in the Cinderella fantasy, some men seem to have their own romantic fantasy scenario that has little to do with the partner they’re marrying.
Then there’s the large wedding industry ready to tell Bridezilla and Frankengroom that yes, they do deserve it all. (This LA Times article talks about the current wedding excess and gives good statistics.) Add in gay marriage, and there’s another billion dollar market waiting to be tapped, according to one estimate. I don’t see how that number doesn’t sway conservatives opposed to same-sex marriage; that much business has gotta be good for America.
Gay marriage should be legal, but let’s try to fix straight marriage while we’re at it. Sure there’s pre-marital counseling, but why not require every couple that wants to get married to, say, spend a weekend building houses with Habitat for Humanity. That will show you something about your partner, as well as get something useful accomplished. Then, if the couple is still interested, they can zip into the venue of their choice for the ceremony. That’s not exactly how I did it, but hey, I’m willing to preach here.
And let’s separate the hoopla from the marriage. No, I’m not saying cut out all the spending; there’s too much money involved and I’d hate to put all those butterflies out of work. But what about spreading the idea that every individual is entitled to one Celebrate Me ceremony in his or her lifetime? It can be when you graduate, when you move into your own place, when you marry, when you divorce, when you stop biting your nails, whatever; but the idea is that more than one is very bad manners. If you use yours up and want to marry with a big ceremony, just hope that your partner hasn’t had his or hers yet.
The ceremony can mimic a wedding, or anything else the person giving it likes, while indulging him or herself silly. Givers can wear anything they want, including a white dress big enough to take out a doorway, can demand millions of dollars worth of gifts, can invite or disinvite anyone and make them fly around the world or wear a dress resembling sausage casings with a bow. Best of all, there’s no pesky partner potentially stealing some limelight, or trying to interject an opinion about the whole thing.
This way the economy keeps getting its spending injections, while anyone who wants to can get married, presumably not swayed too much by the inducement of sampling the menu at every hotel in town or getting the full works bridal makeover at the local day spa.
And so maybe there’ll be fewer cringe-worthy marriage starts.
I’ll drink to that.
Thu 01:19 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Today I was planning to write something light-hearted, but I think I’ll skip it for now. It’s hard to come up with a topic that holds its significance in the face of the overwhelming distress after Hurricane Katrina. That could be true every day; for hurricane substitute so many places of large- and small-scale suffering around the world. It’s just that right now it’s too immediate to keep the usual defenses up.
So I’ll hush my mouth for a little bit until the images recede. If you’re interested in trying to help, Chris Nolan can link you up.
Wed 01:32 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It’s the silly season in our household, also known as son the elder’s birthday. (Don’t worry, son the younger gets a birthday season too, but since he’s new to the talking thing, he makes fewer demands about it.)
As with any enterprise involving children here in the suburbs, this one requires not new clothes (well, sometimes), but rather trips to many stores, each one approximately the size of downtown Copenhagen, but without that city’s superb attention to maintaining toilet paper supplies in all women’s restrooms (even those in the “hippie/druggy” area where you’d think they’d be slacking off). The reason you have to go to many stores is that even though each one is, as I’ve said, approximately the size of downtown Copenhagen, none of them has everything you need, nor even everything in the category it claims to cover.
To get ready for the birthday party, naturally we started out at Parties R Us or Party Hearty or Party City or Parties Are An Overwhelming Financial Burden or something like that.
Luckily, it's summer. At this time of year we’re just ahead of the Halloween crap-o-rama spread. Just try to bring a preschooler into the store when the skeletons and such are popping out and moaning in full display: He or she runs out screaming. Literally, sometimes. Heading in to a party store in October, you’re liable to get bowled over by a shrieking kid who’ll leave tear stains on your pants on his way out.
The main item on the list for the party store this year is a “Star Wars” piñata. I don’t know why “Star Wars.” The kid’s seen none of the “Star Wars” movies. I haven’t noticed any “Star Wars” references on PBS. (OK, OK, he does see some non-PBS TV—blame the grandparents of course.) Anyway, apparently his knowledge of “Star Wars” comes, like always, from Other People’s Children. (And there's lots of other "Star Wars" parties out there.)
Rule number one of childrearing: anything smart or cute your kid does, he got it from you; anytime your child misbehaves or annoys you, he picked it up from OPC. Not that “Star Wars” is so bad, just too old for him and an example of the OPC influence kicking in, a sort of preparation for their adolescent roles of becoming what our mothers called "bad influences."
Wed 12:58 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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In a former life I worked as part of what a colleague called the "financial paparazzi." That’s wire service reporters who chase after hot financial types like trade ministers and central bank chairmen and send out their pearls of wisdom as fast as possible to the computers of guys talking into headset phones who try to make money on whether Bulgaria plans to rename its national dish.
With that background, the news that China is revaluating its currency naturally set what’s left of my wire service reporter’s heart all aflutter. And I’ve decided to give you, gentle reader, the benefit of my analysis. Sure, you can get professionals telling you to look for effects on the trade balance or on interest rates, but I tell you folks, “Nosiree, Bob.” China’s yuan change will have a major impact on one area: architecture, specifically the design of the tract mansions that have spread throughout the overpriced suburbs.
Architecture? Yes, architecture. The tract mansions I sometimes visit with my kids when we're on the child-schlep circuit around town all have a space I call the Toy Cave. See, on the main level architects design the houses with a dining room and a living room and a family room and a kitchen and a breakfast nook and an office nook and a diddle-the-nanny nook and they’re mostly open and flowing into each other and it’s enough space to park your 18-wheeler carrying a load of bargain priced plastic toys from China guaranteed to break or lose three key parts within hours of being pried out of the hard-as-steel plastic package designed to cut your thumb any way you open it. But few suburban families own an 18-wheeler, or drive it enough to need to worry about parking places, so they have no idea what to do with all the space.
Continue reading "Yuan-na Supersize That?"Thu 04:17 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
