Goodbye Kitty

If you have known me for a while, you probably know that I have been a Hello Kitty fan for a number of years. Alright, decades. I’m not one of those fanatics such as this man’s wife, but I do have some household Hello Kitty items, a few Hello Kitty T-Shirts, and yes just a little bit of Hello Kitty jewelry. There’s a little Hello Kitty hanging from my rear view mirror, along with a Starfleet Academy dogtag.  Ok, and yes, I have a Hello Kitty/Chococat tattoo. So something I enjoy doing when I happen to get to the mall is wander up to the Sanrio store. In fact, I was there yesterday afternoon.

Sanrio used to make its money selling cheap stuff like coin purses and pencils to schoolgirls. No more! The target demographic has grown up, and now you can purchase everything from baby towel sets to garnet pendants. I kid you not. I guess you don’t have to sell very many $3500 watches to be wildly profitable.

But has this backfired? The cute little handbag that I might have whim purchased for $20 was $80, a price at which it better be leather and not have a cartoon cat on it. As it turns out, that was a bargain; it would run me $120 plus shipping online. It’s just as well I didn’t even see the $500 Hanamo limited edition 35th anniversary commemorative handbag. Sorry, these are prices at which I’m just not buying. Have they priced themselves out of their core audience, or are they taking advantage of the fact that there are many women my age who are willing to shell out this kind of money?

I guess the economy can’t possibly be as bad as it seems if these products are actually selling. So then the question remains: at 35, is Hello Kitty having a midlife crisis, has she jumped the shark, or is she crazy like a fox?

In closing: American maternal mortality rates are appalling; imagine there’s no government; nearing retirement, and unemployed or underemployed; loan modifications delaying the inevitable; food stamps and obesity; Howard Dean and Karl Rove set to debate, live!; why don’t we use some stimulus funds to, you know, renovate crumbling infrastructure?; should police really be arresting people they think might be planning a crime, particularly without anything like a warrant?; Why “liberal” ideas die in Washington (ha, not many real liberals up there anyway, just a lot of “moderates” whose opponents paint them as liberal); Cheers and Jeers; the “Screw the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions at the Same Time Act of 2010“; and PC World officially doesn’t get the iPad. It doesn’t need any of that crap for business, because it’s not meant for business at all! Saying it needs alternative browsers to Safari is like saying the iPhone really ought to run Windows Mobile.

The Shorties Saga: New Moon

Merry Zappadan: It has been brought to my attention that Zappadan began last night. Felicitous greetings those who celebrate, and of course the admonition to dance like a fool and not eat yellow snow.

Can’t He Eat Dinner in the Toilet? Geez!: That is what some ignoramuses are really saying when they tell a lactating mother to go nurse in the bathroom. Get over your bad selves; the original purpose of breasts — God Given if you believe in God — is to feed babies. Why don’t you go eat dinner in the toilet?? Now that being said, most mothers try to be discreet: they nurse at home before going out, they use modesty covers, they pump. But **** you if you disagree, anyplace it’s ok for a baby to have a bottle, it’s ok for him to eat the all natural diet that was intended for him.

Banks do as they please, we pay the fees: 6 more bank failures yesterday. That brings us to 130 for the year and no sign of slowing down in 2010. But the surviving banks aren’t accountable to their customers — an obvious breach of free market thinking, wherein banks that screwed customers should be the first to fail as we take our business elsewhere. Instead, they have to be “pressured” to do the right thing, and “regulated” to keep them from screwing us harder. We can’t just take our business elsewhere because either our small local bank will fold and be sold off to Faceless Conglomerate Bank Co or our mortgages will be bundled and sold piecemeal to them. And while it’s easy to say “I’m not doing business with Chase, close my credit card account and move my checking account”, it’s hard if not impossible to control who owns your mortgage. How nice that B of A suddenly has the money to rid itself of its largest and most meddlesome investor. Since when doesn’t the Fed have the ability to regulate them anyhow?

Say goodbye to all this, and hello to oblivion: (obligatory) Escalation in Afghanistan is teh win… for the bin Laden anyway. Heaven forbid we should learn from those who tried to fight “the good war” there before us.

It’s the Jobs, Stupid: The people want to go to work. They want to work more than they are worried about the deficit or much of anything else, and that’s actually kind of smart: you see, working people pay more taxes than those who don’t work! If we don’t get these people jobs, we risk losing the middle class altogether. (Yeah, I know I swore off HuffPo, but it’s Elizabeth Warren). Here’s a handy fact sheet.

Obligatory Health Insurance Reform Roundup: Remember, if the insurance companies want it, it’s probably bad for consumers — and that’s what Forbes says! Women have unusually high stakes in this thing. Poor Aetna having to cut all those customers so they can remain fabulously profitable! And remember that when they talk about “cost controls” they aren’t talking about controlling your premiums, but rather what your doctor and hospital gets paid. Oh, and this clip, wherein Shatner wishes the Vulcan neck pinch and mind meld were real… and that Nimoy were standing behind his guest.

Why Police Confiscations Must Be Further Regulated: “We think your passenger is a hooker so we’re taking your car… Oops we’re mistaken, you owe us $1400 to get your car back!”

And Last: A handy Wall Street to English translator.