By The Campfire

July 16, 2008

Some people do not believe in global warming. They say we’re just going through a cycle. The melting ice caps, extreme weather changes and Pentagon changes to accommodate such global changes do not change their thinking. Some people think men never landed on the moon, that it was all staged on a set in Hollywood. Truth is not based on your belief in it. If it is raining outside, that is not up for debate. Walk out there and you will get wet. So what is the truth?

A new book by Paul Roberts talks about the coming worldwide food shortage. Some people say that is whooey. He writes otherwise.

“The End Of Food” paints a surly picture for those of us who regularly like to eat. When it comes to inconvenient truths, no matter whether Al Gore utters them or they come from The O’Reilly Factor, we are in an age of extremes all around.

It’s been building for some time. Politicians all over the spectrum have always tried to set us all against one another, but over the last ten years, this effort has gained sure-footed purchase – majority versus minority, rich versus poor, healthy versus unhealthy, employed versus unemployed, urban versus suburban versus rural, Democrat versus Republican versus liberal versus conservative, versus you, versus me, versus them. Joe McCarthy would be proud. If we know who to hate, maybe we won’t notice more important things.

“I know there are potholes the size of F-150’s on the highways and gas is $5 a gallon and I just lost my job because the CEO ran off with the CFO and all the cash and I was screwed out of my life savings by unscrupulous investment companies and my tax bill is $20 grand and I can’t afford to catch a cold and the water is rising from the river over there and a government official on TV said he’s here to help and my wife is hooked on meth and my children will never have health care and my personal tab for two endless wars is approaching $60,000 — but I’m really worried about my neighbor’s sex life.”

All of this change gets played out in strange places. Recently it came to light that fuel costs (headed toward $140 a barrel as of this writing) are finishing off some age-old activities like county fairs and carnivals. Something wicked this way has, indeed, come. Attendance was falling even when prices weren’t rising. But with fuel blowing the roof off the bearded lady’s trailer, the midway is going to be thinner soon. Too many other things to do, like looking for a 2nd all-night job so you can pay $40 grand a year for little Josh to go to college and get a degree in something no one will ever hire him to do.

Go to a carnival and look for the Tilt-a-Whirl. It has probably been replaced with an inflated bouncy jumper contraption like you see at birthday parties. Think I’m joking? It is already happening. Same for the Ferris Wheel and Octopus. It is just too expensive to transport and run all of those legendary, old carnie rides. Costs are up four times and ride prices are the same as they were ten years ago. Adios to the Whirl-n-Hurl.

You can always go see the blue ribbon livestock in the barns, errr, wait, they couldn’t afford to bring them either. Nevermind.

“Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, due to increased costs of fuel and transportation, this year’s award winning livestock are only available at the concession stand. And they are tasty, let me tell you.”

It doesn’t stop with carnivals. It may be wrapped around your neck. Time magazine says that 4.5 million dads got a tie this Father’s Day. The tie, by the way, is having as tough a time as pickup trucks at the gas pump.

Ties topped out in 1995, selling $1.3 billion worth of the neck ornaments, and have been getting looser since. The jeans, shorts and T-shirts of the dotcom days nearly killed ties and casual Friday bled into casual Monday through Friday and that global warming thing (whether you believe it or not) got involved and one stripe led to another and a lot of people stopped tying the double Windsor every morning.

I have never been much of a tie person, so I observe this cultural phenomenon like a menswear anthropologist. But at funerals and weddings and graduations and interviews, I dig my lonely tie out of the closet and look in the mirror and it all comes back to me – flip this end over, loop that end around, tuck and pull and slide and boom – I am wearing my one tie.

I talked to an HR person about this and she said that corporations are not cooling offices like they used to (to save money on energy bills, which is known as “corporate warming”) and the suit and tie have been one of the first casualties of this trend.

Not many things worse than wearing a suit and tie when it’s 100 degrees in the conference room and the Powerpoint projector is pumping out 15 more degrees into the helter swelter of disagreeing people pointing at charts, trying to sweat their way up the buttkiss ladder.

Thankfully, the government (while wearing red power ties, by the way) has an answer to these changes: Instead of trying to wean us from the petrol tit, they just gave legal protection and written permission for oil companies to harass and “annoy” polar bears in Alaska (“annoy” was the word they used, which, I suppose, is appropriate). This “annoying” permission comes a month after declaring the polar bear an endangered species.

It seems the melting ice caps weren’t annoying enough for the big, icy, 3rd cousins to your dog. We all knew we had something in common with those giant bears besides drinking Coca-Cola: Being annoyed.

Next time you are watching Discovery and a polar bear sniffs a fish a hundred miles upwind, look closely at its elongated-snoutish face. You’ll see the same expression you see in the mirror as you are trying to knot your tie, or fill your tank, or pay your taxes or stand in the unemployment line behind the laid-off operators of the Screaming Swing, Rock-o-Planes, Zippers, Teacups, Scramblers…

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