My neighborhood is expensive. I can’t afford to live here, but I do.

How I do it is my own business. Do I traffic illegal arms? Maybe. Do I create custom airbrushed murals for hot-air balloons? You just don\’t know, do you?

But the point is, here I am, a lowly college student, an aspiring (not inspiring) writer with a monthly income that resembles the cell phone bill of a rich, chatty person.

Many of the people who live around me are retired. My neighbors on the right are retired. My neighbors on the left are retired. Those are physical directions, not political.

Politically, everyone in this neighborhood is on the left. Well, not everyone, of course; there are some Republicans. But the lawn signs, bumper stickers, and the Volvo to Chevy ratio strongly suggest Democrats.

An example (in the case you are doubting of me): last weekend I saw hand-painted signs around the neighborhood that said “Bake Sale for a New President.”

Now, I don’t know how much money it takes to get a New President. I\’m sure you can find a good used one on Ebay. But even a used, failed-state Ebay-president like, say Robert Mugabe, probably doesn\’t come cheap.

If a New President one costs anywhere near the amount it costs to buy a New House around here, you’d need to sell a lot of cookies. Like one million.

Or, sell several dozen cookies for $17,339 each. Whatever. You do the math.

I fully expect the neighborhood (thin though their ranks may be) Republicans to respond by holding their own bake sale. It\’ll be just like the Dems\’ sale, except only the poor people will have to pay taxes on their cookies. The Democrats, will have trouble deciding what kind of cake to sell, and will sit there for months waiting for a U.N. resolution to before they start the sale.

The end result, of course, is that a bunch of rich Democrats and a bunch of rich Republicans will sit around eating cookies and pie, and talking about all the stuff they’re going to buy at Ikea when it opens this summer. The amount of money raised will be wildly inadequate for procuring a New President, or for that matter, a Used President. And the number of Volvos and lawn signs will go unchanged.

In other news – sorry for the light posting this week. I\’m procrastinatingworking on a bunch of end-of year stuff for school. A long post about a septic problem I\’ve been dealing with at the house is in the works.

Look for that later in the week.

I said long, not good.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2004 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Home-ownership, Minnesota, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.