No More Bikes

One thing I've noticed, as thousands upon thousands of people are losing their jobs in my region, is that none of them are riding their bikes.

Nope. Not one single person. Not one laid off soul has even considered trying to save a little cash by biking. I'm still the only schlimiel riding a bike up and down Franklin Blvd.

On such a nice day, too. Yep. Today I rode my little bike in a T-shirt and shorts, in late January, while thousands in the Midwest drove themselves to Home Depot to wait in line for hours to buy a generator, to run their 1080i's and charge their iPods during this powerful global-warming-driven ice storm and concomitant power outages.

Not only that, I rode to work down Broadway, right past two iconic state "businesses," the DMV and EDD. Not one additional bicyclist going to either of these places. Here in our green, environmentally correct state, things are so fucking sprawled out that everyone is forced to drive to the unemployment office, and that's all these people do, they drive. I find it quite interesting that they will drive their expired cars to the EDD, but not across the street to the DMV to pay their registrations. Hey, with no job, the registration is sacrificed before the cell phone bill. I understand -- really I do. I understand -- I really do. I was amazed at how many expired cars I saw today. Here in my SMUD parking lot a cop could have his weekly quotas filled in just one morning citing all the expired cars. Absolutely phenomenal.

I will continue to sarcastically post about all these lost jobs while having some pangs of sympathy. My cousin and his girlfriend who have now both been laid off or fired are gonna find 2009 a year without a whole hell of a lot of Hope. General assistance to the rescue, at a time when the state is $40,000,000,000 in the hole. My three brother-in-laws, all out of work. And all five of these people, all five, aren't even included in today's news headline of 4.78 million jobless claims, a new record, because none of them are pulling unemployment, either having been denied or because they simply aren't counted anymore.

I suppose I will continue my sarcastic rants, because I personally believe it was our lifestyles, our fiscal recklessness, our idiotic living arrangements, our complete disregard for energy conservation and our sense of entitlement that led to our current predicament. I will stop one letter short of saying that we brought all this upon ourselve