Spirits in the Material World

Dear reader, I fancy myself as leading a sparse, spartan, and spendthrift lifestyle (praise to you, oh alliteration gods!). My "appetites" are comparatively modest or, as some liken them, borderline, ahem, anorexic . . .

Before going any further, I implore you dear reader to halt your concerns -- I am far from the likes of homeless blind transients who unwittingly slept with their mother and are destined to slay their father! (Besides, Oedipal complexes are best saved for another blog.) However, to paraphrase another self-imposed homeless individual, the unexamined life is not worth blogging about! In other words, upon closer scrutiny, am I, like those with similar modest and middle-class pedigrees who liken themselves as LIBSTERS (yeah, that would be a portmanteau of "Liberal hipsters"), really nothing more than a closet PIGALIST (in layman's terms, "pig capitalist")?

Well, when I am at a cross-roads and cannot seem to set things straight, I at least know to whom to turn. No, dear reader, not Jesus or my parents or parish priest or Capt. Jean-Luc Picard or even that lovely blue-eyed brunette from Amsterdam who only cost 50 guilders (yeah, that would be another blog). No, the man of which I speak is none other than that great American comedian/social commentator, Jeffrey M. Foxworthy. Thank you, Mr. Foxworthy: your tried and true, innocuously jocular the first listen yet Chinese water torture all subsequent times, stand-up routine is the key to my conundrum lock, the hot blade to my Gordian knot.

So, without further ado, my dear reader . . .

You Might Be a PIGALIST If:

1. You own more than 5 pairs of shoes. Or just one pair of Salvatore Ferragamo kicks.

2. Lie awake at night because you have a lousy 720p flatscreen instead of the "true" hi-def 1080p version.

3. Own more than 1 of the aforementioned inferior 720p flatscreens.

4. Paid for the LE version of your car instead of the base model because you preferred the faux wood grain interior.

5. Cannot live without your TiVo or DVR.

6. Think people who access the Internet via dial-up belong in a separate socioeconomic class.

7. Defer from buying any new movies on DVD since you know you'll be buying the Blu-ray or HD DVD version soon [pending 1) who wins the format war and 2) when those blasted high def. players go south of 3 bills].

8. Have ever paid more for the sake than the entire sushi meal.

9. Own a pair of Diesel jeans.

10. Could not pass up Clash of the Titans for $9 at the local TAR-jay. (Actually, this could just qualify you as a damn smart shopper, son! And to digress, the movie is arguably Ray Harryhausen's best work, rivaling his stop-motion action awesomeness in Jason and the Argonauts. As a child, I never so wanted to pee in my pajamas as when I heard the menacing rattle of Medusa's slithering tail. And who can forget fair Andromeda and those innocent, yet subliminally sensual, moonlit scenes while she slumbers in her bedchamber tower (right before the giant vulture whisks her spirit away in a human sized birdcage)? And Bubo the mechanical, golden owl made in the likeness of great Pallas Athena's own immortal owl by the hands of the lame god blacksmith Hephaestus? Do not get me started!)

11. Own a desktop and a laptop and a Treo with Internet access and wireless Bluetooth.