The Way We Live Now: Counting the many things we can't afford. We can't afford plastic bag taxes. We can't afford lemonade stand licenses. We can't afford our own crayfish. And why should we? This is America or whatever!

Seattle, despite being home to many hippies on heroin, voted down a proposed 20 cent tax on plastic and paper bags. Said one disappointed hippie, "We're going to lose it because more people are concerned about their cost of living than what they take their groceries home in."

As well they should be, hippie. How high does "what they take their groceries home in" really rank, reasonably, on the average hobo's priority list? Free shopping bags means you don't have to buy garbage bags, and that's called recycling.

God. Hippies.

Why can't you all be more like New Yorkers, what with our bootstrap-pulling can-do ways? A ten-year-old girl got a $50 ticket for selling lemonade without a license in a city park—days later, she has the Parks Commissioner buying lemonade from her, the ticket quashed, and the ticketing officer pulled off the fucking job. That's called "Don't fuck with me," and it's the power of savvy PR war games like that that will pull this city out of economic malaise. That, and lemonade revenue.

In California, they're still dealing with crayfish poaching. It's only getting worse now that people are poor and hungry and craving the sweet, sweet flesh of the crayfish.

If California crayfisherman had half the sense of little New York girls selling lemonade lord knows we wouldn't be in this mess today.