The Way We Live Now: moping around in our unnecessary business suits. We got all dressed up, and they canceled the event. No money. So here we are in our suits, needlessly. We won't take them off. They look nice.

The "Global Sourcing Forum," which sounds all professional and businesslike, was all set to have its big event in NYC until, woops, they ran out of money at the last minute, and the event was off. But all the guys were already here in town for it, all dressed up, with their fancy brochures and branded pens and whatnot, so they all tried to cobble together some ad hoc meetings to try to salvage the thing, but there was no getting around the fact that it was just a sad, sad collection of out-of-towners in suits, for no good reason.

It kind of reminds you of a country called American where everything was going fine and everyone was dressing up fancy and then all of a sudden one day we all showed up to work and noticed, hey, all the money is gone. But we weren't about to tear off our clothes and go screaming through the dark streets because that would have been unseemly. So we sort of sat around and looked embarrassed in our business suits while all our money evaporated and Greek unemployment ran to 12% and everyone in France went on strike and all the crappy Rust Belt regions languished forever and the tomato pickers went bananas over a measly penny a pound. And we just sort of sat around in the corner, trying not to call attention to ourselves, unsure what to do next, but sure that it shouldn't be anything drastic.

Life is like that sometimes. You show up the party and everyone's already dead. All you can do is make the best of it.

[Pic: AFP]