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As I was reading the comics page in the newspaper this morning, it occurred to me that over half the comics on the page have been around at least as long as I’ve been around. Hi & Lois, Hagar the Horrible, Wizard of Id, Mark Trail, Funky Winkerbean, Dennis the Menace. Even, god help me, Peanuts, which is the seaweed-strewn immortal zombie of the comics page.

Because these strips have somehow tottered into my adulthood, I still see the same characters and names that I grew up with. And many of these names aren’t being regenerated in maternity wards. New mothers and fathers are naming their kids Joshua and Heather, not Dennis or Rex or Linus. Therefore, because these comic strips have the vampirish quality of continuing to exist despite everything, a time will come when the only place these names appear is on the comics page. Kids today, the Joshuas and the Heathers, will still be reading about the Dennises and the Heathcliffs when they are adults.

Which is really weird; it’ll be as if I had to read “Ezekiel the Menace” or “Hatshepsut and the Pirates” or “Nero Google & Marduk Smith.” Okay, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith is a bad example, but you get the point.

I have exactly two superstitions. Between them, I can explain the universe.

The first superstition is that if I talk about something, it’s not going to happen. The Pizza Gods superstition is a facet of that.

The second superstition is that if I talk about something, it IS going to happen. For example, if I were to say–and this blog entry should in no way be taken that I am saying that, because I categorically am not– that I’m going to die in an automobile accident in six months, I will die in an automobile accident in six months.

I live in a tidy world, populated by unspeakable horrors.

Here’s an excerpt from my Economics book:

“Supply-siders believe that how long and how hard people work depends on the amounts of additional after-tax earnings they derive from their efforts. They say that government should reduce marginal tax rates on earned incomes to induce more work, and therefore increase aggregate inputs of labor…. The higher opportunity cost of leisure would encourage people to substitute work for leisure. This increase in productive effort could be achieved in many ways: by increasing the number of hours worked per day or week, by encouraging workers to postpone retirement, by inducing more people to enter the labor force, by motivating people to work harder, and by avoiding long periods of unemployment.”

Isn’t that fine? In this excerpt, it’s the supply-siders talking about maximizing work and productivity, but it’s not limited to them; all economists see that as a good thing. In other words, the economic theorists are busy trying to minimize our pleasure. That’s their mission. They want us all to work longer and harder, so that more goods are created, so that more consumers can be born to work harder to create more goods to allow more consumers and more goods and more work. To an economist, there is no such thing as “enough.”

I’ve spent four months with this textbook. There are many passages similar to this one. I’ve learned what I was supposed to learn, at least to the point that I could perform adequately on tests, yet I feel, between the authors and myself, that someone’s missing a critical point, and that someone is not me.

This is the point: is it not evident that a person should maximize leisure? “Leisure” means time that is one’s own; doesn’t it make sense that we should try to have as much of that as we can?

Yes. Yes, it does.

I fail, on a basic level, to accept McConnell and Brue and their cohorts’ premise. I fundamentally disagree with them.

And that’s what I’ve learned from my Macroeconomics course.

Here’s something: you are not ultra-rich. I say this with complete confidence. Bill Gates and Hiram Q Moneybags are not reading blogs. Therefore, the blogosphere audience consists entirely of the non ultra-rich. Now that I’ve established that, I move past this assumption to my consequence, which is this: fuck you, Hiram Q Moneybags.

There are at least three different measures of a person: money, power, and spirituality. Money is easily measured. Those that don’t have money must content themselves with power or spirituality. Power is not as easily measured as money, but as some powerful bastard in the Supreme Court once said about pornography, “I know it when I see it.”

So there are rich people and powerful people, and we know who they are.

Those who are not rich or powerful, if they want to be measured, are religious. These people, everyone else, if they want to be measured, must use a spiritual yardstick. The rich and the powerful say so. “At least you’re a good person; at least you will find your reward in heaven.” It’s a remarkable gimmick.

The ultra-rich are a thousand, ten thousand times richer than I am. The powerful are far, far more powerful than I. Fuck those lousy bastards.

Now, because I’m not rich or powerful, I’m not afforded the opportunity to bang these people’s heads together, or breathe their air. I know that; I’m a realist. But what can I do? I have to do something. I can’t sit in a temple and let nirvana flash over me, not while these capitalists and despots are exploiting people. But I also can’t think (for the life of me) of anything that I could do to make these people go away.

Most of these people have followed the rules to get where they’ve gotten. That’s their defense. Systems have been set up in such a way that the weasels and burghers, the capitalists and cynics, the leaders, the cronies, and the lucky become lords. That of course means the systems are broken in some fundamental way. But more importantly, what can we do about the people who have mastered those systems?

Until the revolution happens, which will happen, because revolutions always happen, I can only ignore them. It’s a pretense that they count on, and it delays the day that the rascals are thrown out (I know that), but it also allows me to make it through another day without loathing the human race.

The perfect planet would have only two hundred people on it. That way, the rich guy and the powerful guy wouldn’t be able to insulate themselves from the others. That way, if someone became too rich, or too powerful, at the expense of others–and it’s always at the expense of others–the rest of us could beat the living shit out of him.

That’s my perfect planet.

I’ve got an idea: tax the shit out of the rich. You know Forbes’ annual list of the ultra-rich? Tax the living shit out of them.

Crude oil futures closed at $55.40 US a barrel in New York, up $1.41 US, after a prominent investment bank suggested that oil markets could be in for a “super spike” that could see prices go as high as $105 US a barrel.

I have a superstition, which is this: if a grim thing is mentioned, or prepared for, then that thing will not happen.

Long ago, at Pizza Hut, when we didn’t want to work too hard, we used to set multiple order forms and multiple pens out on the counter to show the gods that we were ready for the mad Friday night rush. It was an offering to them, a way to show our respect for their powers. I remember Niles Gatian setting out rows and rows of order forms. Sometimes it even seemed to work; Friday would pass quietly, while we tip-toed.

So now that a Super Spike has been mentioned in the media, perhaps it won’t happen. Perhaps Mothra and Lester have been adequately mollified. Perhaps.

Because, you know, sometimes it works.

Of course, I’m chiefly concerned about the death of John Paul II because I’m selfish. And it occurs to me that I won’t see an endless string of popes during my lifetime. It’s a lot like the thought that there is a finite number of super bowls or presidents or class reunions that it’s allotted for me to be coincident with, only this papal wave is much longer. It’s also not nearly as metronomic as I like my clocks of doom. Portents and harbingers of my inevitable decay should be more dependable.

When I was 15, popes were dropping like flies; we went from Paul VI to JP I to JP II in, what, two months? But then the new guy turned out to be a fighter and lasted for a quarter century. That’s a long wavelength. I don’t have too many more of those left in me. The only longer wavelength for such things is the one sitting on the British throne, and I’m getting less confident that I can outlast her with every passing year.

I certainly don’t wish harm for the Pope or the Queen or the New England Patriots. I approach this from a purely historical perspective, with the prayerful wish that I get to see as much more history as I can stomach.

So I’ve got four popes under my belt (I checked; John XXIII lasted just long enough). My question is “How many more popes do I get?” God, how many more?