Tuesday, July 18, 2006

I am hot enough for ya

"...I allowed myself the rare treat of a satisfied smile." --Graham Greene, Travels With My Aunt

Imagine a time when such things were rationed, savored, meted out with the precision of a titrating lab technician. I can't. The satisfied smile as "rare treat" is as alien to me as the notion of a once-a-year Wonka bar. It's not wartime. We are a people blessed with plenty. I don't exfoliate using a makeshift brush constructed from balsa wood and rationed bulgur wheat. Um, hello. I have a luxury brush with all-natural badger bristles and a walnut no-slip handle. Why not use what God provides? I'm not a goddamn ascetic. We're the greatest nation on earth, and we're at our economic zenith. If we have the means, why not employ them?

So look, I'm not going to apologize for my lack of thrift. Frugality is for pussies. If you want to live like a scuffling desert rodent, hoarding colored string until some imagined apocalypse, go right ahead. I'm going to exfoliate with the implied sanction and backing of a 12 trillion dollar nation-state, and I'm going to stuff my face with an entire box of chocolate-covered blueberries, and I will smoke a bowl & watch the old VHS tape of "The NBA's 100 Greatest Plays," and I'm going to do it with a satisfied goddamn smile on my face. The entire time. All day, all night, smug as a bug in a rug, smiling with an insufferable degree of superiority, daring America's enemies to punch me in the throat.