It was a palace of consumption. D. was awed and amazed. “They have everything,” he breathed. “How would we ever find anything?” He wanted to spend hours in the store, finding out just how much of everything they had.

I always feel a bit like I’ve taken soma when I succumb to the bright, easy, clean cathedrals of spending. It really did have everything. We could have shopped for food, clothes, toys, electron– wait, you probably know all this because you’ve been in one.

Sometimes hard is better. Sometimes I’d rather not have my desires gratified so simply and easily — the ease is like water on a weed and my desires grow and suddenly I want more and more and that want is like bindweed, choking back better thoughts, making them fight for space to grow.

I’m not really in a rush to go back.

It’s not exactly infecting the house, or rather, I’m keeping it all reasonably well packed away until cocktail hour starts. Still, I would not say that I’m exactly on top of the Christmas shopping. This is partly because that general air of bah humbug to which I referred earlier. But also it is because I am not a good shopper. I run out of oomph very quickly, even online and decide it’s time to go for a walk or for cocktail hour again! But it’s also because I am a person who is pretty much ruled by her sneakily rebellious subconscious. And in my subconscious, Christmas present buying feels a little like this:
I mean, seriously. Bog off, Capitalist Stooge and let Christmas be about love and twinkly lights (with lead on them – wash those hands!) and the light coming back to the world and snow and fa la la la la la.

And if I needed MORE proof that Santa is merely a pawn of the evil empire, try this on: apparently Santa is a Disney character which gives the Land of Disney the right to tell some nice, white haired chap to change his shirt. Where do I start with that?

I’ll tell you one place I’m going to start. I’m going to make mince pies and maybe mull some wine and look forward to the early evening dusk. I love this time of year, the chance to hibernate in the encroaching dark and light candles and listen to Lorena McKennett and think about all the wonder that is in my life, lest I forget. Bah Humbug, Christmas presents. I have everything I want right here.

(Well, except for some bras that fit, but that’s what the January sales are for).

Funny that no one has trademarked the smell of armpits or skunk. There might be an opening there.

I am increasingly confused, bemused and appalled by this country of mine and the people in it who seem to hold the majority view. These people like to ban books. They like to tell other people what to believe. They like to go to other countries and tell them what to believe. Over two thirds of the U.S. population believe that creationism ought to be taught alongside evolution in public school science classrooms. Over a third would prefer that evolution not be taught at all. These are not some wacko fringe. This is not even a slim majority. This is a huge proportion of the citizenry. Huge. This is why Bush is president. This is why the right to choose is even in question. This is why homosexual marriage is such an issue. This is why public schools are collapsing. This is why we are in Iraq. It’s appalling to me, and yet. And yet.

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. John Stuart Mill

If they were calling for something I agreed with (say, that we take George Bush and ten of his closest political cronies into the middle of the Sahara and leave them there with only Captain Underpants, some warm water and the collected works of Karl Marx) I’d be doing a happy dance. At last, I would cry, the country has come to its collective senses. But wouldn’t this be just the same thing? Wouldn’t then some uber-conservative blogger be crying out in horror that we are oppressing his right to be a complete oppressive jerk? How is this better?

I hate this. I hate being so fairminded and hooshy gooshy liberal and believing (as I do) that each person is equally entitled to her own opinion, even if I find that opinion abhorrent. I cannot see a safe way to draw a line about opinions. I cannot see a safe way to censor. I would like to. I would really really like to take all those people who voted for Bush, who think that Katrina was divine retribution for allowing abortions to remain legal, who think that eye makeup should invariably be frosted light blue, who think that I am wrong and put them in a large, reasonably well-groomed housing complex somewhere. That would be nice.

Although I fear someone has already done this, and that I got stuck here by mistake. There doesn’t seem to be much joy in swimming against this roaring tide of stupidity and conservatism. Time to move to Sweden, maybe.

It took a few minutes, but finally my brain managed to cut through the yarn-lust and get my attention.

Eighty bucks? I would never, and I mean NEVER, spend $80 on a sweater in a store. I’m usually over by the sale rack crowing when I find something for $15.99 (although these days I’m not usually in stores at all). What the hell was I thinking? Eighty just for the raw material? I staggered off to bed in a fit of self-recrimination and disappointment. Not only am I turning into a crazed consumer but I also don’t get a pretty sweater.

What is more philosophically interesting about this (or maybe sociologically interesting) is that the crafts that were once penny-wise ways to keep a family fed and dressed on little money are now indulgences. It is so much cheaper to buy bread than make bread, to buy cookies rather than make them. Fabric costs a fortune and wool (good wool) does too. I used to be pleased that I had these thrifty skills and now my skills are leading me into some strange world of self-indulgent artistry rather than economic sense. In this world of plenty, the old skills are affectations. It seems a shame.

I know there’s a point to knitting (or bread making) for its own sake, but while our finances are tight, these things feel too indulgent and I wish they didn’t. On the up side, I’ve been reading about reclaiming yarn from thrift store sweaters. I’m thinking of hitting the Second Mile and seeing what might be worth unravelling.

In other news, I finished this for Patrick (and since I already spoiled the surprise I can post a photo) and I’m finished the back of Helena’s dress and charging ahead on the front. The yarn for Helena’s dress (S. Charles Victoria cotton-viscose mix) is very cool and I’ve never knit a faster yarn (although it also drops stitches like cannon balls — one tiny slip and I’m down four rows. Yikes!)

I’m actually quite pleased about it, though. It’s wonderful to engage in a bit of healthy barter after wading through the stinking mire of capitalism and its discontents. I fold brochures. She teaches my children (or me or Ed) some art. It’s very satisfying.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything worked like this? At Whole Foods: I’ll sweep floors for sushi. At Baby Gap: I’ll fold all your sweatshopped tshirts into lovely little piles for new jeans for Daniel. At the wine store: I’ll tapdance for Pinot Grigio. At preschool: I’ll answer the phones for early childhood education. At the knitting store: I’ll recite Chaucer for attractive japanese wool.

And therein lies a crucial flaw in my plan. I am not, unfortunately, replete with tradeable skills. I cannot shoe horses, pave roads or weave cloth. Being able to hold forth on queer theory or knit charming little baby sweaters over several days are possibly life skills, but not truly barterable. Knowing how to cry “Victory!” in Klingon or knowing all the words to every song on They Might Be Giants’ second album may make me occasionally fun to have for dinner, but won’t cut it at Trader Joes.

Still, I’d be willing to pick up a few more useful skills if it meant being able to leave the checkbook at home. Money has always seemed an improbable fiction, a delusion we all agree to suffer from so that we can all keep on going to the mall.

Although it’s possible that I think this way because we don’t have so much of the stuff. If I had so much illusory cash that I could trade it for a large yacht with a staff (including one whose sole responsibility was to mix g&t as needed), I might.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. — John Maynard Keynes

Even the “normal,” “small” H2s test my philosophy of live and let live. They are abhorrent, mobile symbols of an arrant, determinedly selfish individualism, of consumerism, of consumption, of the triumph of advertising over good sense and of the ultimate failure of taste. That’s all true just for the two-door version. What can be said for the limousine version?

Well, you can get it in white, black, yellow, silver or tuxedo (black on top, white on the bottom). It has your choice of marble or hardwood floors, leopard skin or leather, marble or stainless steel and both neon and strobe lighting. It seats 20 idiots (or 98 cats or one hippo or 10 swinging monkeys or 45 children or 250 parakeets or a million sardines or no reasonable people) who can be entertained by seven flat screen televisions, xbox, wet bars, mirrored ceilings, lava lamps, three ice coolers, a fireplace and surround sound. And it can be yours on EBay for only $82000 and change, but hey, who needs change when you can be single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the ozone layer and the further dependence of the United States on foreign oil which will in turn keep us embroiled in pointless international conflicts of our own creation. Oh, and it has all-wheel drive and all-terrain tires for when you want to take this baby off-roading through the jungles of, um, Manhattan.

I thought SUV limousines were senseless. Actually, I thought SUVs were senseless. But I have had to redefine senseless to squeeze in the H2 stretch limo. Ed commented that if we bought one, we could have another child. We can’t squeeze another car seat into the back of our Honda, you see (although this is not the deciding factor against further use of my womb). But if we had a Hummer limousine, we could have four children. Heck, we could be Mormons. I’d love to see a row of car seats in the back of one of these, maybe some goldfish crackers all over the hardwood floors and Finding Nemo on the flat screen televsion while some juice boxes cooled in the ice bucket. It might not be a bad way to drive long distances with children actually…

No no, bad Mommy. Must not imagine having own chauffeur.

I have tried abebooks, which is a sort of a search engine for used books sold by all sorts of different sellers. But the books there are often just a little too expensive for used books and once you add shipping charges, well, usually I scuttle guiltily back to Amazon to spend the same amount of money and get shiny new copies. Today, however, I found what might be an answer.

Thriftbooks. They’re a relatively small operation and they sell their books cheap. Really cheap, even once you add the cost of shipping (which is clearly where they’re making their money). So, for example, just now I bought seven books for twenty dollars of which 17 was the shipping. Doesn’t matter that the real cost of the book is hidden in the shipping. It works out as less than three bucks a book. I’m in love.