Look for the Union label ...

You could almost put that to music.

(Special thanks to one of the local truck drivers for the shirt design. Modeling it is my coworker Alan.)

###

Writing in the old and new world

From Hubpages, 'cause some things just have to be said ...

"One of the results is that there is this gigantic push-pull between the need for quality writing and the writing that sells. OK, that's not a new story; people are more likely to read People Magazine than Atlantic Monthly. But the buyers at least had flesh and blood, and sometimes even a brain. But now much of the stuff on the Internet is pure crap with no discernible value, even though it's well-keyworded pure crap with no discernible value."

OK. Call it a screed. Anyway, check it out.

###

In case you wonder why I haven't written ...

(... sounds like Mom ...)

Anyway, here's the skinny according to HubPages:

Despite recession, back to workin' on the railroad

Life's turned wacky. Bear with me.

-- Eric

Don't just do something, sit there: America's laziest states

(He's not sleeping; he's hard at work inspecting his eyelids. Photo by Getty Images.)

Call it laziness or just smelling the roses a little bit, but taking it easy is an art form in some areas. Here's an interesting study on the subject by Business Week:

America's Laziest States 2010: More Sitting, Less Doing - BusinessWeek

The 10 most sedentary states are:

1) Louisiana

2) Mississippi

3) Arkansas

4) North Carolina

5) Tennessee

6) Kentucky

7) West Virginia

8) South Carolina

9) Alabama

10) Delaware

Of those 10, eight are in the Solid South while border-state Kentucky counts as a ninth in some circles. But dipping into the next rank of 10 you find the Northeast fairly well represented, a few Midwestern states, and one -- Arizona -- west of the Rockies.

Surprisingly, New York ranked 11th. A surprise because you'd think of all those get-'er-done ADHD types in The City. I guess those slackers upstate pulled the rankings right down.

South Carolina, the place I call home, ranks #8, Here's what Business Week says:

South Carolinians watch more television than all other Americans, according to BLS data. A report by the South Carolina Health & Environmental Control Dept. shows about half of adults do not get the recommended amount of physical activity, only one-third have sidewalks in their neighborhood, and only 37.4 percent use walking trails, parks, playgrounds, and sports fields for physical activity.

We're not lazy. We just know how to relax.

According to the stats from various sources, folks in Mississippi sleep the most at 8 hours, 59 minutes per day. That state also has the highest obesity rate at 33.8 percent. South Carolinians watch the most TV at 3 hours, 7 minutes per day, while Louisianans do less actual work at 2 hours, 41 minutes per day.

This working-per-day is an interesting figure, and it comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's the average for everyone aged 15 and older, and doesn't really take unemployment rates into consideration. Still, that's a lot of screwing off. By contrast, South Carolinians work a relatively industrious (!) 3 hours, 26 minutes per day.

Strangely enough, age isn't as much a factor as you'd think. Maine, the state with the oldest residents (median age 41.5 years) placed 16th, while Florida (40.1 years) came in 16th.

I'm surprised California didn't make the list ... oh, they said "laziest," not "craziest."

Never mind.

###

It's all about people

I tell you, I don't know why I get in these moods sometimes ...

###

Oakland pot shop meets organized labor -- yeah, man.

DISCLAIMER: I do not endorse any products or organizations mentioned in this piece. Forget that.  

Remember those old "Look For The Union Label" commercials? The song was real popular in the early 1980s, urging people to a) buy American and b) buy something that was made by union hands:

Now, I can't hear that song any more without giggling. Now, workers at a medical marijuana dispensary got their invitations to join Local #5 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

I got this from Big Government:

Unions: Getting The Munchies After Smoking A Bowl: "

Over at Forbes I recently wrote about the union plan to organize your neighborhood fast food joint, which could turn the process of ordering a Number 3 with Coke into a culinary trip to the DMV. Well, maybe now we know why: they have been laying the groundwork to organize the entire food chain, as it were, since they have organized a pot shop in Oakland. Now you can Super Size it and smoke a spliff without ever crossing a picket line.

Now let's get back to the commercial. Notice how grim the narrator looks? She sure looks like she does not want to be there. That's OK, other union members will be glad to hook her up, though some of the singers look like they'd smoked a little too much.

Just sayin'.

###

Making a living in ObamaNation

Like it or not, Obamacare is the law of the land. The chances of having it declared unconstitutional are only enough to hang a prayer on, and the chances of it being repealed are nonexistent.

OK. I wasn't planning to debate that piece of legislation again; y'all should know by now what I think of it. But Obamacare ushers in a whole different world, and it's especially noticeable if you like to eat, and if you work to keep beans on the table.

Not long ago I was drawing unemployment, and looking for work. I was thinking, anything that moved was subject to my attention, and if it didn't move I'd kick it a few times and make it move. But the job market is, well, pretty slim.

Enter Obamacare. Now, people who hire others are taking a long hard look at whether they can afford to do that. It's bad enough with a tanked economy, but now that the federal government is requiring health care besides? That just kicked any possibility of recovery right between the eyes.

It's a real bad time to look for work.

A few weeks ago I said that one is foolish to depend on one source of income, what with the uncertain economy. Let's amend that. Now, anyone who works for another person in a typical employer-employee relationship faces a bigger disadvantage than ever before.

Welcome to the new world. The independent contactor is king. Instead of punching a clock, getting paid by the hour and banking on those cool benefits, the jobs scenario has people getting paid by the job and seeing to his own benefits.

I'm no stranger to this. For years I worked as a taxi driver and as a freelance journalist. Although the taxi company often played it fast and loose with independent contractor law, it was a pretty good way to work. Call my own hours. If I'm not making money it's my own issue. If I have a problem with the boss, then it's time for some serious therapy.

Now, I'm doing it again. I pretty much gave up on finding actual work for someone else, but am throwing my resources into working for myself. A bit of a high-wire act, admittedly, but it's starting to pay off. I have a couple of income sources for writing Web content, and am making moves toward hire-out writing and editing.

It's a tough go. My biggest hurdle is personal. While it's true that a person with ADHD always has several things in the pot (I'm making no admissions here), focus is my biggest issue. I'm working on that, and making small gains. Except for that, there is really nothing standing in the way.

Meanwhile, I'm making a little hay:

• Got my high-speed Internet up. This in itself is huge. I don't have to run out with laptop and capture a wireless signal; I can work from home.

• Getting my routine together. A few hours in the morning writing and editing today's copy, a bicycle ride in the afternoon (I wrote this column while riding back home from the bank), digging up a little more work, and things like that.

• Working, as I mentioned, on focus. I checked out the "Pomodoro technique," which is nothing but a fancy name for setting a kitchen timer while you work and taking regular breaks. I do my best work in short bursts, living in a bubble of kick-butt for a half-hour at a time.

Meanwhile, I have a to-do list for the next few weeks:

• Continue getting my groove on, fine-tune the routine.

• Get a wireless router. Currently my desktop computer is hooked up to my high-speed Internet, and I do most of my writing on my netbook, outdoors. I move files back and forth with a thumb drive, an inelegant solution. I've priced routers, and I should have one within two or three weeks.

• Start looking at upgrading equipment. My desktop computer is the bottleneck in the system. It's probably 10 years old, and it hesitates a lot when I'm doing high-speed online stuff. I've gutted the operating system and am running one that's little more than a browser and text editor, but it's still the thing that slows me down.

• Dedicate part of my work day to what lawyers call "rainmaking," hitting the wires hot and heavy to drum up some more work.

It's coming together. It's a whole new workaday world out there, and I'm ready for it.

###

Time to log off, you think?

As a public service ...





Think this deserves your immediate attention?

###

Manufacturer to leave USA, blames anti-business climate

Emerson Electric, the nation's largest manufacturer of electronic devices, is considering leaving the country.

Although the recession is a partial reason, Emerson CEO David Farr blames high taxes and regulation in the United States.

The federal government is “doing everything in [its] manpower [and] capability to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said at the recent Baird 2009 Industrial Conference in Chicago.

In comments reported by Bloomberg, Farr added that companies will continue adding jobs in China and India because they are “places where people want the products and where the governments welcome you to actually do something. I am not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.”

Interesting ... very interesting. We've seen companies pulling up stakes for several years, outsourcing their work out to some third-world country where someone will bust his tail for less than a buck an hour. We've bemoaned all the layoffs that have slashed companies since the economy went into the toilet a year ago, and we've heard a passel of excuses. But what we're hearing from Farr is pretty much the straight stuff.

Want to kill a business? It's easy if you're in power. Regulate them like crazy, and tax them buttless. They'll get the hint and go to friendlier surroundings soon enough, taking their jobs and tax revenue with them.

Emerson's no lightweight in the industrial world. In 2007, the St. Louis-based corporation reported revenues of $22.5 billion, making it the 111th largest company in the United States and easily pacing the home-grown electronics industry. The closest competitor in electronics is Whirlpool, the country's 127th largest company with revenues of $19.4 billion.

###

Raising pork to a whole new level: Stimulus report

So how's that stimulus working for you?

Check out this report, made public by Sen. Tom Coburn's office. The Oklahoma Republican says most of the projects funded by the stimulus package are ... well, pork isn't a strong enough word.

Read it (it's downloadable, in pdf format). It's a hoot.

###

Stimulus will create jobs -- to fix its own screwups

Have you checked out recovery.gov, the government's site tracking how many jobs are saved/created under the $787 billion stimulus package?

Check it out. It's either outrageously funny, or real scary.

According to the site, the stimulus saved or created 30 jobs in Arizona's 15th Congressional district, at a cost of $761,420. Great trick, as there is no 15th District there.

The site also points out success stories in nonexistent districts in Connecticut, and several other states.

From ABC News:

Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error ... “We report what the recipients submit to us,” said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board ... “Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes.”

See, this stimulus is truly a miraculous piece of legislation.

I understand the web site will be fixed at a cost of at least $9 million. But the good news is, repairing the data will create -- guess what? -- some jobs.

Now, that's a stimulus success story.

###

(Photo: Your tax dollars are working hard for you in Arizona's 15th Congressional District. Oh ... actually this is the California Conservation Corps, taken last March. By Chris Pizzello/AP Photo)

Throwing race bait to Boeing: Will company bite?

OK. Boeing recently announced they were going to build a plant here in North Charleston. Probably the biggest economic news since ... well, since I've been here.

Now, state Sen. Robert Ford is playing the race card, making sure Boeing is an equal opportunity employer and all that. From the Post & Courier:

COLUMBIA -- The South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus won't push for unions at Boeing's planned 787 Dreamliner facility in North Charleston, but the state legislators will do all they can to make sure the state's minorities have a fair shot at the new jobs the aeronautics giant will create, Sen. Robert Ford said Monday.

Ford, on behalf of the caucus' 39 legislative members, wrote a letter to Boeing's president Jim McNerney on Oct. 30 to ask for information about the company's hiring practices and its race and gender breakdown ...

Got that?

Now, Boeing is a big company, a highly specialized company. I don't think they really give a rip about what the job applicant looks like. The question is, can this guy do the job? Will he be an asset or liability to the company?

Boeing exercised faith in this area, throwing the dice that the folks here are not just a bunch of backward country boys. I hope McNerney doesn't think everyone else here is as big an idiot as Sen. Ford.

When I grow up, I wanna be a ...

According to the folks at Pongo Resume, these are actual jobs, taken from U.S. Dept. of Labor's Dictionary Of Occupational Titles.

Any of these would look great on your business card, and make you instantly popular when someone asks what you do for a living.

So ... here are some of these job titles. If you had one of these jobs, which industry would you be in?

TITLE: Bosom Presser
INDUSTRY: Military Services or Laundry & Related Services?

TITLE: Blind Hooker
INDUSTRY: Boot & Shoe or Forestry?

TITLE: Rubber Tester
INDUSTRY: Motion Picture or Rubber Goods?

TITLE: Rack Carrier
INDUSTRY: Paper Goods or Automotive Services?

TITLE: Vibrator-Equipment Tester
INDUSTRY: Personal Service or Machinery Manufacturing?

TITLE: Parts Inspector
INDUSTRY: Real Estate or Many Industries?

TITLE: Boner
INDUSTRY: Government Services or Meat Products?

TITLE: Fur Beater
INDUSTRY: Fur Goods or Dairy Products?

TITLE: Bottom Nailer
INDUSTRY: Leather Manufacturing or Wooden Container?

TITLE: Pantyhose-Crotch-Closing-Machine Operator
INDUSTRY: Welding or Knitting?

TITLE: Suppository Molder
INDUSTRY: Pharmaceutical or Sugar & Confectionery Products?

TITLE: Muff Winder
INDUSTRY: Air Transportation or Textile?

TITLE: Bit Shaver
INDUSTRY: Petroleum Refining or Misc. Fabricated Products?

TITLE: Nut Picker
INDUSTRY: Machine Shop or Canning & Preserving?

TITLE: Impregnation Inspector
INDUSTRY: Electrical Equipment or Chemical?

OK. You're gonna love me. For the answers, go to Pongo's site. I'd tell ya, but then I'd spoil the surprise.

(Special thanks to Media Bistro for sharing this.)

###

Health care plan needs to be put out of its misery

The ObamaLosi health care plan cleared its first hurdle over the weekend with a narrow, 220-215 vote Saturday, and it's a tough call whether it will pass muster with the Senate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolinian who swears he's a Republican, said the proposal for national health care, all 1,990 pages and $1.2 trillion of it, is on life support as it hits the Senate.

"The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday. "It was a bill written by liberals for liberals."

Which is amazing because Graham is one of the most liberal of Republican senators, and has been one of the early supporters for national health care though he draws the line at a public option. He may be right, though, and people who see the big picture hope he's right.

If the health care bill is not DOA already, then it's time to mash a pillow in its face. Put it out of its misery. Please.

Here's one thing that gets me about this piece of legislation: If approved it won't even kick in until 2013 -- after the next presidential election -- but the White House and Congress are both in a hurry to get it approved and signed now.

"We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, 'this is making me sick,' " said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich.

The only reason I can see for this urgency is that the Democrats -- and in particular the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid/Barack Obama troika may never see as much pull as it has now. If the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey give a clue, the liberal gang's power base will be in trouble in 2010.

And voters won't realize how terribly screwed up the health care system will be until after Obama is up for reelection. Convenient, no?

I'm not much of a prognosticator, and the only message I get from reading my coffee grounds is that it's time for a refill. But I expect to see the best doctors shutting down their practices and the second-raters taking over. If that's the case, health care will suffer.

I also expect to see changes in the workaday world. Unemployment is high enough right now, but if employers are required to provide health care for its employees, they'll think twice about hiring extra help.

So if you're expecting unemployment rates to drop with the health care plan in place, forget it.

Companies are already cutting back to save a few bucks, letting some employees go and dumping the extra load on the workers that stay. Crank in the cost of mandatory health coverage -- or the fines for noncompliance -- and more workers will be cut loose. That's almost a guarantee.

I expect to see employers riding the razor's edge and going more toward independent contractors instead of employees. Unfortunately, not everyone is smart enough to know what that entails or honest enough to care -- under the law independent contractors set their own schedules and work conditions, and employers won't have the same control they have over on-the-books employees. Many employers, I suspect, will attempt to call their employees independent contractors and try to set their same operational rules, and eventually lose their butts in lawsuits everywhere.

On the short-range view, national health care almost sounds like a good thing. What's wrong with keeping the people healthy even if they can't afford the scandalously high medical costs?

But on the long view, everyone loses, and the biggest loser will be the guy who punches a clock, puts in a day of work, pays his taxes, and tries to put some beans on the table. He won't be able to afford fatback to go in the beans.

###

(Photo: An anonymous ticked-off taxpayer somewhere in the USA has his say. The photo came with an email I received this morning. Convenient, yes?)

Stimulus: Not much boon, but a whole lot of doggle

How's that stimulus working out for you?

According to the White House, the $787 billion stimulus package created or saved somewhere between 500,000 and a million jobs, depending on how you count them -- and maybe depending on which day of the week you ask. There doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement there.

Michigan is one state that was really nailed in the economic meltdown, and even when times were good it wasn't any great shakes there. But that state received $5.2 billion in federal stimulus. Now we're told that 22,500 were "created or saved." It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that our taxpayers forked out $231,000 for every job created or saved in Michigan. Taking that number even further, assuming the phantom "job created" paid $20,000 per year -- meaning not much of a job -- that $231,000 will pay for 11.5 years worth of that salary if the payment was made direct instead of going through the many layers and black holes of bureaucracy.

So far, $160 billion in stimulus money has been spent. From that, the most-cited figure is 640,000 jobs created or saved nationwide. That stacks up to about $246,000 per job. The Associated Press cautions against using simple math to figure out cost-per-job, as there's a lot more to the picture than that -- the asphalt the employee's going to push around, the worker's benefits. But this is still money spent, no matter which pocket it's going into.

Meanwhile, what about these 640,000 jobs? The White House doesn't differentiate whether these jobs were saved (i.e. maintaining the status quo) or actually created. It also doesn't tell whether these jobs were mostly in the private or public sector, although we have a few indications. A little more than half -- 325,000 -- were in education, purely public sector.

The smart money says that if you want one of those stimulus jobs, work for the government.

As I go over this shopping list of stimulus projects, I keep thinking of the old Works Progress Administration (WPA), from the weirdly wired brain of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Most of those WPA projects were more boondoggle than anything else -- curbs in the middle of nowhere, things like that. To be sure, some folks did actually find WPA work (great market for shovel-leaners back in those days). But this stimulus package seems to have precious little boon but a whole lot of doggle.

According to Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-Oklahoma) office, here's where some of the stimulus money went, and again this is stuff I just can't make up:

- $100,000 for a program in Maryland to keep tabs on how often doctors and nurses wash their hands at hospitals.

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit turds at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.

- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarters campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway. Somehow I'd think Bill Gates would be able to afford this on his own, without government help.

- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.

- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.

- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women. I can't see much in the way of jobs coming from that, though you can say that's definitely stimulating.

- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.

- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.

- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.

- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased. And why not? In some parts of the country being dead does not affect your right to vote either.

- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn. Ask anyone in that state -- they can get all the snow anyone needs for nothing.

- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill. Do the math here. That's $21,729 per truck. Shoot, you can almost buy a new one for that.

- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.

- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan.

- I love this one: $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money.

- $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio.

- $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago.

- $356,000 for Indiana University to study childhood comprehension of foreign accents compared with native speech.

- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths. Well, that's part of the $5.2 billion I mentioned, and I'm curious how many jobs came from that.

- $148,438 for Washington State University to analyze the use of marijuana in conjunction with medications like morphine. Again, I know a lot of students who would do that research for nothing.

- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri.

- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York state.

- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival.

- $71,000 for a hybrid car to be used by student drivers in Colchester, Vt., as well as a plug-in hybrid for town workers decked out with a sign touting the vehicle's energy efficiency.

- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.

Oh, yes. It's not pork. Pork is what the other legislator, on the other side of the aisle, implements. But you already knew that.

###

Best economic indicator may be your underdrawers

How bad is the economy?

Forget looking at the usual indicators. Unemployment numbers, productivity, and foreclosure rates give only part of the picture, but there are some other, equally reliable, things to study to get the real picture close up.

Like checking your own underdrawers.

I'm not talking about what suddenly happens to them when you get a layoff notice or your house gets foreclosed. Just check the condition of them. If they have holes or the waistband is pulled out of stretch, it usually means time to replace them. That is, if you can afford it.

But when money's tight, you're going to cut corners. You may find more hamburger and fewer steaks in your freezer. You may go for the dollar menu at the nearest fast-food emporium instead of dinner at that Thai restaurant you used to frequent. And you may skimp on replacing your underdrawers.

Face it. Few people know whether someone's wearing boxers, briefs, or butt floss under most circumstances. And if you look like me, even fewer people are going to care. Worn-out briefs are not as readily noticed by the public as, say, a coffee-stained shirt or a run in the stockings. Your own hindparts are not going to know the difference except for maybe a little extra ventilation. Underwear sales are a fair indicator of what's happening in the financial world.

I've noticed lately my local WalMart is selling boxers at deep discounts, a three-pack for little bit of nothing. It's not just a back-to-school sale, 'cause the young'uns are already back in school. But they're mildewing on the store shelves. Folks are just not bothering with them. They'll last another year.

From Time, here are some more indicators that your economists don't think about -- but real people do:

*****

1. Appalachian Trail Hikers. When the going gets tough, the tough take a hike. There's been a spike in the number of hikers making the long trek—meaning plenty of people have plenty of free time on their hands.

2. Immigrants in the U.S. After rising for decades, the number of foreign-born residents has stalled. Apparently, immigrants just aren't as attracted to this country as they once were.

3. Men's Underwear Index. When the economy is stable, the sale of men's underwear remains flat and strong. But when money is tight, sales drop pretty quickly as men tend to wear their skivvies more times before replacing them. After all, nobody (or not that many people) sees your tightie whities or boxers. In 2009, men's underwear sales are expected to be down for the first time in years.

4. The Reselling of Cemetery Plots. When people buy one of these, you gotta assume that the thought never entered their heads that one day they'd want to—or have to—sell before putting them to use. People need the money, and suddenly cremation is cool.

5. Pro Football Games Blacked-Out on TV. As the NFL season opened, a dozen teams had not sold out their home games, and with blackout rules that means that viewers at home might not be able to watch those games on TV. They blackout games to encourage people to buy tickets, but fewer folks today are eager to drop big bucks on something that (normally) they can enjoy for free from home. Blackouts are just one reason fans may feel alienated by the NFL.

6. Fewer Babies Born, Fewer Babies Planned. In one survey, 44 percent of women said that they were going to put off having kids or have fewer kids because of the economy.

7. The Toughness of Marine Ads. The Marines have met all of their recruitment goals, as typically occurs when the job market is bad. And so ads on TV are showing the toughest side of being a Marine, with barbed wire and even some dry heaving. Why? Because now they can be picky, and they want to attract the toughest, most highly motivated recruits.

8. Coupon Redemption. The numbers are already up 23 percent so far this year, demonstrating that people are eager to save money. And you know who is more likely to be clipping those coupons? Folks who are well-to-do.

9. Long-Distance Relationships. Because job prospects are so hard to come by, people are more inclined to relocate for a good offer, even if that means leaving a loved one behind.

10. The Hot Waitress Index. Here's the theory: When times are flush, attractive women in big cities have many opportunities to make money through marketing gigs, modeling, hosting parties, and such. When times are less than flush, those opportunities dry up, and then restaurateurs scoop them up to wait tables—and to attract diners who like being served by hot waitresses.

*****

I'd consider a few other indicators here:

Sales of cheap food: I'm talking about Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, dried beans and rice, and peanut butter. Even when times are flush, I always must have peanut butter in my pantry. But it's turning into a staple, along with the beans, rice, and grits.

More people doing things themselves: The Lowes' and Home Depots are doing good business, and even the mechanically challenged are trying to do their own repairs. If this crisis continues, you just might see more home surgeries -- gee, I hope not.

Cancelled Internet accounts: Shoot, I save a few bucks every month by going to the library or community college, setting up my laptop, and working on a public wifi hotspot. Plus, it's probably better for me anyway, because I'm so easily distracted.

Ditching the landline: That makes good economic sense anyway. What with cell phones and wireless Internet getting more reliable, hard phone lines become less relevant.

Thrift stores advertising on the radio: I kid you not; they are. They're doing big business, too. Even cool people shop there.

###

You tell me: What other real-life indicators are you noticing? Use the comments section for input. Oh, I'm not going to ask you about the condition of your shorts, and please don't volunteer ... that's definitely TMI.

Some audiences are tougher than others

Ouch. This really has to hurt.

AP - Police say a woman singing karaoke in a Connecticut sports bar was attacked by six other women who didn't like her performance ...

That's a tough audience.

In my "other life" I'm a musician. Been doing that for a while, nearly 25 years. I've fielded bands that ranged from the really good to the downright awful. I mean some of these bands -- particularly in the early days -- sounded like geese farts on a muggy day. We've been fired from plenty of gigs back in the old days, been shorted on the cash a time or two, seen the tip bucket get stolen a couple of times, and had a lot of fun in the process. Playing music is, well, nice work if you can get it.

David Owens, a singer/guitarist I've had the privilege of working with a few years ago, brings a sunny disposition to the gig. Always upbeat, always in a good mood, and he tends to spread it among the band members and the audience. He does a few odd jobs here and there, but he plays music for a living and he loves his lot in life. What other job is there, he asks, where you can work 45 minutes then take a break? Go three or four hours and call it a day? Do those things you love to do and call it work?

Even if you have to "do Freebird" an awful lot.

Now, that's a joke among musicians. Freebird is southern rock band Lynrd Skynrd's most popular song, and every band in the world knows it. It's guitar-driven, with a twin guitar lead for the out solo. And when you're playing in public, you can almost guarantee someone will ask for that song. Doesn't matter if your band doesn't even have a lead guitar player, folks will still ask.

You remember the movie "Road House" (with the late Patrick Swayze), where the band is playing from behind chicken wire? I've never seen that in real life; the club owner usually won't go to such great lengths for the band's welfare. But I keep flashing back to some scary venues where I've plied my trade ...

... like the club in California that had an armed, uniformed security guy at the door. He was tougher than tough. Carried a .44 mag on one hip, a stun gun on the other. I watched from the stage as he applied the stun gun on one bar patron. It wasn't pretty.

... like the bar that had dartboards on the wall behind the stage. More than once I caught myself looking between songs to make sure the darts hadn't moved.

... like the outdoor street festival a few years ago, on a rainy day. We stood under a canopy, had the sound equipment in the covered bed of a truck, and we got a few songs out before we started hearing ominous crackling sounds coming from the speakers. Rather than fry the sound system, we terminated the performance.

... like the all-black club in San Bernardino. The only people I knew were in the band, and the patrons initially viewed me as someone who, well, didn't belong there. I was given this look like, you'd better sound real good if you want to live. I must have sounded all right -- as David would say after a particularly good gig, "tricked 'em again."

... like the bar that had a stage big enough for three people, and we ran a 10-piece band in there a few times. To go to the bathroom you had to squeeze between the guitarist and the horn section.

Sometimes the venue is OK, but the band itself is scary...

... like the time my vocalist got drunk and began waving a gun on stage. We hit the floor real fast.

But none of us ever got attacked by a bar patron, not for sounding bad anyway. Of course, if a band member makes a move on some fella's girl, all bets are off and none of this counts anyway.

With a band you're getting paid for all this so expectations are higher. Karaoke is a whole 'nother thing. Many of the singers are doing this on a whim, fueled by that high-octane social icebreaker, and if it sounds good it's purely accidental.

But a tough audience is still a tough audience.

Recession creates banner business for job scammers

I've mentioned it's a jungle out there, but few things are as tasty and succulent to the predator as the unemployed person.

And as times get tougher and unemployment rates are flirting with double digits, there's plenty of game out there, and consequently, lots of hunters.

Some of the sleaziest are using job promises as bait, according to Time:

Over the summer, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a wave of cases, including one against Job Safety USA, a front company that targeted people seeking maintenance and cleaning work. The ads claimed that for $98 Job Safety would send a credential called a "certificate registration number" and then help the registrant find a job. But the credential was bogus and there were no jobs. "When the economy is down, scammers take advantage of people who are anxious about their financial position," says FTC attorney Karen Hobbs. A growing area of concern: unemployment-insurance scams. (Make a note now that you should never have to pay anybody money to collect unemployment benefits.) Certain frauds are easy to sniff out once you know to look for them. A lot seems wrong with an ad to make $500 in two days that explains "the world have gone to the extend on make money with every means you can get you hand on" and then asks for "Status Of Job You Into." Less blatant red flags include e-mail addresses with domains like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and Rediffmail (an Indian outfit) — most legitimate hirers have e-mail addresses from their companies. A company or recruiter that asks for your bank account or credit-card number is a huge warning sign. True, plenty of companies use bank information for direct-deposit paychecks — but that comes after you're hired.

License needed for a few minutes of free child care

I guess if you're helping out a neighbor by watching their kids for a few minutes, you'll need a license to do so. At least, that's what the Michigan Department of Human Services told a woman there.

This is from USA Today:

... Lisa Snyder of Middleville, Mich., says she takes no money for watching the three children for 15-40 minutes each day so that the neighbors can get to work on time ... the Department of Human Services, acting on a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home, demanded she either get a license, stop watching the kids or face the consequences, WZZM says ...

And this is being a rights issue and all, you know the Cato Institute has something to say about it:

... this is what people mean when they warn that an ever-expanding government threatens the values of neighborliness and community. When the government provides services for free, or when it erects obstacles to individuals’ providing those services, it reduces private provision and simultaneously increases the demand for government services. If you make it illegal for neighbors to watch one another’s kids, you weaken ties of neighborhood and community ...

Don't these government types have something better to do? Like, attempt to sprout a brain?

No wonder nobody's working: ESC automated

Been to the unemployment office lately?

For me, this is a relatively new thing. I hadn't set foot in such a place in more than 22 years, so we're talking about some serious learning curve.

This visit to the Employment Security Commission became necessary after I was laid off from work. I'd mentioned this in another post (and in Twitter). Kind of a bummer, but let's move on, shall we?

Now, the unemployment line isn't on my Top Ten Favorite Places To Go. To put it bluntly, I'd rather gargle razor blades than visit that place. I don't care for government offices in general, but off my experience the unemployment office is probably the worst of the worst in Civil Service Land. Last time I was in the unemployment line was in San Bernardino, and I spent most of that time standing up and wondering if the line would move any time soon. Just for fun I'd calculated how many feet I had to travel from back to front of the line, noted the time I was there, and figured out how many miles per hour I was moving. Actually, hours per mile. Back then, you wrote out your claims on paper and mailed them in, and the staff showed great aptitude and unmatched creativity in screwing things up.

This time, I came in prepared. Had my laptop with me. A bottle of water. Cell phone. MP3 player. "Divine Justice," the latest of David Baldacci's Camel Club series. At 523 pages, I was ready for some serious waiting.

My first act going in was to take a number. I had #917. I looked at the screen up front; now serving #880. Only 37 to go. I just might finish that novel, I thought.

To my amazement, my visit was much quicker than expected, and the staff was actually helpful. That's the good news. I really didn't see anyone, though I'm not sure whether that is good or bad news. I'm not even sure I got anything done. The only one who interviewed me was a computer.

I guess if you're computer-illiterate, you're really going to need a paddle when going for unemployment benefits. For a minute I considered amusing myself by telling the staff I was Amish (which I used to do in grocery stores during those off hours when the only open checkstands were the self-serve automated kind), but the MP3 player and headphones hanging from my neck would have blown my cover.

Seriously, in the public area I only saw three employees. There was a receptionist at the front desk, and two people -- one male, one female -- in the room where I applied. All of them looked about 12 years old, and none of them seemed to mind working with the public (I thought the redhead who guided me through the application database was particularly cute even though I've got a few decades on her). I never saw the other office, the one with the cubicles populated by aging timeserving civil servants and all the accoutrements you usually find in unemployment offices. Don't want the walk-in public to see the thumbscrews and branding irons, I reckon.

Once you get the knack of entering your stuff on the database, you're doing all right. It takes very few minutes to get your claim in. All the garbage. Where you worked, why you're no longer there. The real time eater is registering for work through the South Carolina Job Bank, a required step. Figure a little less than an hour to get all that stuff in.

(Which reminds me, I've never heard of anyone actually getting a job through job services at the unemployment office. I'm taking it on faith, though, that it does happen.)

It turns out that in South Carolina you can do the whole application process online, and not even see the inside of the unemployment office -- at least not in the early going. In fact I started to do this during my lunch break on Friday, but was stopped short when asked to enter my driver's license number. I never can remember it, and I never carry my license. When on a bicycle I'd rather use something else for identification if I need it.

The last page view of the database was an information sheet with my confirmation number (which I wrote down; it looked important) and instructions to the next step in the process. It's printable, so I hit PRINT and waited.

And waited.

And called the cute redhead over one more time.

"OK, joke's over. I'm waiting for this to print. What's the story?"

"It's not hooked up to a printer," she told me.

Oh.

She handed me a manila envelope, which has all the phone numbers and Web addresses to file the weekly claim. That's the next step. My day to call is Sunday, any time. Even at 4 a.m. It's automated, the cute redhead explained.

And it is. I'm looking at the instructions right now:

- Call the TelClaim computer.

- Enter your social security and PIN numbers.

- "Did you work?" Press 1 for YES or 9 for NO. To repeat a question, press 0. If you worked, enter how much you earned and press the STAR key.

- "Did you quit a job or were you dismissed from a job since filing your claim?" Press 1 for YES, 9 for NO.

- "Were you able to work, available for work, and looking for work as instructed by the claims office?" Press 1 for YES, 9 for NO.

- Press 1 if all these answers are correct. Press 9 if you want to change an answer.

- If these answers are correct, do not hang up until the computer tells you, "your claim has been accepted."

Gee, no wonder no one's working.

Despite those disquieting anticlimactic feelings, I was in and out of there in about 90 minutes, which was about half the time I'd expected. I only got to page 54 of the novel -- and that's only because I read some on the bus.

When I left, I didn't bother to check whether #917 was called yet. Probably not.

Oh, by the way ... "Divine Justice" is good so far. But then, I recommmend the whole Camel Club series.