It seems like just six days ago, instead of six years ago, that the headlines were full of gloom-n’-doom about economic hardship and consumer cutbacks.

Then, for a while, the media (particularly much of the “alt” media) were back to ignoring the poor and the working families, preferring to inhabit (or imagine) a world of unlimited luxury.

Around here, this meant slick magazines and online shopping guides dedicated to the highest and best possible spending of money. It meant “progressive” local politicians who unashamedly sucked up to the upper castes, and to the merchants and real-estate developers who outfitted and supplied upper-caste households. It meant hundreds of elegant bistros and whole grocery chains dedicated to ever-dearer visions of The Good Life.

Now, though, we’ve got front-page wire stories talking about Americans’ supposed “newfound frugality.”

As if tens of millions of us haven’t been pinching pennies all along.

In my current stompin’ grounds of Belltown, the alleged Good Life has been what it all was supposed to have been about for a long time. I’ve got old condo ads from 1992 offering up fantasy visions of unparalleled beauty and elegance, quoting old British aristocrats in wedding-invitation typefaces.

Later in the decade came the big billboards with the manically grinning young couples striding happily into their utterly fabulous view homes.

But behind the marketing images, there were a lot of young couples whose parents had donated down payments, hoping to get their kids into home ownership while it still could sorta happen.

There were law-firm junior partners and hospital physicians living just beyond their means, trusting/hoping their careers would grow to match their mortgages.

There were AARP-agers downsizing from bigger homes elsewhere with more stuff in them.

There were Microsoft stock-option early retirees, who’d pinned the whole rest of their lives on the premise that their accumulated nest eggs would remain uneaten by inflation.

They, and much of the rest of us, now await whatever’s next, wondering how to stay afloat.

Warning: The following essay mixes metaphors pretty much without discipline.

This day after Indie Day finds much of the nation in a pensive mood, waiting for the pages to turn and for 1/20/09 to show up already.

Meanwhile, the reign of Nixon 2.0 drags on in a seemingly interminable final act. It’s beyond my old metaphor of the annoying jam band that will never leave the stage with its trite 45-minute noodling routines. It’s more like the emotionally abusive old relative who ruins every family gathering by reciting the same endless, unfunny racist “jokes” and always messing up the punch lines. Nobody tells him to shut the hell up anymore, because they know he won’t.

During this time, everything’s winding down. The thievery on high gets more desperate and more overt. The cast of crooks gets more blatantly maniacal.

(Next in our metaphor megamix: The pre-climax of an old mad scientist movie when the mad scientist goes utterly kabong and starts declaring himself to be immortal and invincible, just before his monster/alien ally/chemical formula/hypnotic spell turns around to attack him.)

Yes, a few industries with close ties to the Thief-in-Chief are reaping obscene profits, while the economy as a whole is speeding into reverse.

Yes, this stupid/tragic/inane/unneeded war drags on and on.

Yes, the graft, the corruption, the sweetheart dealing, the money grubbing, and the power grabbing all have gotten as blatant as you could imagine, then went beyond that, and still keep going beyond that.

Yes, the nationalism/tribalism excuse for a state religion of FUD (computer-world-ese for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt”) keeps getting trotted out in the face of decreasing belief.

Yes, the environmental health of this and all the other continents gets ever more precarious.

And yet—

There’s still so much in this land for which to be grateful.

There’s still so much wealth (material and other) from which we can rebuild the old wastes.

But we can’t wait until January, or even November.

We need to build upon all the values that make up America-at-its-best. The loveable human-mongrel melting pot, the can-do spirit, the love of adventure, the love of novelty, the optimism, the devil-may-care foolishness, the risk-taking, the what-if imagining.

Those are all vital aspects of what’s made this country great.

Those other things, the bigotry and the fearmongering and the inter-tribal hate, those aren’t really American.

Alas, those traits can be found in every big society on Earth and a lot of the smaller ones.

And since America is a huge mix-tape of folks from all those places, it’s only natural that we’d pick up on those cultures’ dark sides, and that they’d have melded into one big all-American dark side.

But for every yang there’s a yin and vice versa.

This X-Treme-osity is America’s weakness and her strength.

And it’s how we’re going to get out of this mess-of-messes.

Greta Christina intelligently discusses a topic about which I’ve occasionally and incoherently ranted—non-thinking and anti-thinking in “alternative” culture.

The nonexistent (outside Africa) hetero AIDS scare that was supposed to hit us any year now has cost governments and health groups about a billion bucks. Bucks that could’ve been spent on treatments and possible preventions for those who really did have it, or who really were at risk.

Another TV season has come and gone. Ratings across the channel spectrum continued to plummet, even on shows/channels that weren’t hit by the writers’ strike.

And with the explosion in programming across broadcast and cable channels, telecasters are constantly on the lookout for entertainment forms that haven’t yet been adapted to the screen.

Saturday Night Live, as you’ll recall, was born from trends in stage sketch comedy that hadn’t yet been brought to TV on a regular basis.

Later years brought us televised karaoke, poker, ballroom dancing, shows based on video blogs and webcams, travelogue shows at pubilc-drunkenness events, and even prime-time bingo.

So: What else is out there, to feed programmers’ ravenous appetites for stealable concepts?

Here are a few ideas. (If any readers successfully package a series based on one of these, you may pay me a modest royalty.)

• Poetry slams
• Jam bands
• The entire worlds of classical music, opera, ballet
• Modern dance
• “Legitimate” theater
• Conceptual performance art
• Easter egg hunts
• Neo-burlesque
• Alternative circus acts, such as Circus Contraption
• Drag cabarets/pageants
• Mr./Ms. Leather contests
• Drum circles
• Sewing circles
• Storytelling competitions
• “Cuddle parties”
• Role-playing games (not cartoons based on the characters in the games, but actual sit-down game playing)

Please feel free to suggest your own.

…posting online, back in the (mem-O-ries!) daze of dial-up connections, I used to have this “back in my day, Sonny” routine. The premise was that I’d start becoming an old crank while I was still young and could enjoy it.

Well, time, as they say, munches on.

Now, people my age are supposed to be onthe “old” side of the alleged Clinton/Obama “age gap.”

We who “came of age before the Internet age,” according to a comment poster on Paul Krugman’s blog, are supposed to have a whole different mindset than Those Pesky Kids. We’re supposed to go in for understated “quality,” such as that expressed in Sen. Clinton, rather than flashy cleverness, such as that seen in Sen. Obama.

But then again, Sixties Generation smugness grossed me out at least as back as 1979.

I identified with my immediate youngers, not my immediate elders. I fantasized about Kate Pierson, not about Stevie Nicks.

When The Stranger and Nirvana’s Nevermind debuted in the same week of September 1991, I felt that my whole aesthetic worldview had finally achieve true recognition.

Now, I feel my sociopolitical world view is finally achieving true recognition.

To me, Obama is a helluva lot more than a guy with crisp suits and a strong speaking voice.

To me, he embodies what I’ve called “MISCosity.” Assorted different backgrounds, nationalities, and influences. Progressive populism. Optimism.

Yeah, Pres. Obama will likely disappoint me, more than once. Compromise is the nature of politics, after all. But I’d rather have a Prez who promises more than he can deliver, than one who will pretty obviously only work on behalf of the insiders and the too-oft-proven-wrong experts.

As one blogger has noted, the Clinton-era “politics of the possible” reeks too much, by now, of the worst selling-out to power combined with the worst self-aggrandizement. A lot of us want better. And we’re daring/foolish enough to believe we can get better.

…speak my mind about the “Belltown Crime” YouTube videos.

The clips in question, no longer publicly viewable, were placed by an anonymous 26-year-old white female who moved into an apartment here and was shocked to find poor people hanging out in the alleys.

That’s a snarky sentence, I know. It makes the videographer sound like one of those upscale couples who move into quaint country houses near picturesque cattle pastures, then complain about the wafting aromas.

Please note the videographer’s not claiming the persons in ehr video clips had directly threatened any crime against her own self. Nor was she overtly ranting about the poor or the homeless, but about what she calls “crackheads.” She’s not dissing them for existing but for existing while (allegedly) drugged up.

Yet, to the untrained (suburban) eye, the behavior of a disoriented, mentally ill, or simply out-of-sorts man or woman, particularly if the man or woman has an unkempt appearance, can be mistaken for the behavior of a frizzled-out drug user.

Downscale people have existed in Belltown long before upscale people did. There have been three traditional newcomer responses to the downscalers’ existence:

1. Ignore, shy away, close the curtains, cross the street, don’t talk to them, don’t look them in the eye, pretend you didn’t see anything.2. Harass, belittle, demonize, call for police crackdowns, alert the media, evict social-service agencies, demand Someone Do Something Now.

3. Empathize, donate, seek positive solutions (no matter how incomplete).

You can probably discern which category I believe the videographer has chosen, and which I believe you should choose.

It’s been a few weeks now since the big Seeds of Compassion mega-conference.

What have we learned?

In terms of left-brain rational learning, not a whole lot that hasn’t been said repeatedly in three decades of new-age philosophy. You’re a child of the universe. Be honest. Be conscientious. Be empathetic. Be kind to people. Take care of one another, especially kids. Spread love and joy. People are more important than power or profits. War is horrible, but so is repression. Vengeance only begets more vengeance.

But from there, the lessons got more subtle.

I’ll just mention one lesson invoked several speakers in the cablecast events—the lesson that empathy is deeper and more personal than mere sympathy.

Tim Harris’s blog, Apesa’s Lament (apesmaslament.blogspot.com), has been an outspoken critic of the city’s current homelessness policy. Harris believes Mayor Nickels is doing too little to find homes for people, while doing too much to harass the homeless into invisibility.

Harris recently noted that, earlier this year, official city documents called Nickels’s policy “consistent and compassionate.” But more recent documents, issued after the Seeds of Compassion conference, bill the city’s homeless policy as “consistent and humane.”

As Harris comments, “The word ‘compassion’ implies a certain amount of connectedness and having something at stake.” Conversely, he describes the adjective “humane” as “more associated with children, animals, and other somewhat helpless creatures.”

This distinction goes beyond the homeless and beyond our own town.

Do we treat other people (even the others we want to help or love) as The capital-O Other, as some exotic-but-lesser life form? Or do we acknowledge that we ARE they, they ARE we?

Taking this approach further, we belong to the same human family with all the group-types we Seattle liberals love to bash. Wal-Mart shoppers. Red-staters. Suburbanites. Churchgoers. Condo owners. People who eat meat. People who watch television. People who don’t smoke pot.

Yes, even white straight males.

…claims you, the avid Internet consumer and blog reader, just might be a “virtual crackhead.”

I’m a little skeptical of these scares. Remember how horror comic books were supposed to turn cleancut suburban boys into juvenile delinquents? When the mere act of viewing an operating TV screen was supposed to turn everybody into brainless zombies? (Oh wait, that accusation’s still being made.)

So go ahead and keep browsin’. Learn a few things. Have some laughs. Just make sure to fulfill those pesky work and home duties.

Ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s sudden downfall has engendered infinite rants, jokes, comedy sketches, editorial cartoons, and, oh yeah, blog posts.

A few of the commentators actually talked about the Spitzer case. Some of them, particularly the Wall St. Journal editorial page, postively gloated in the comeuppance of a former prosecutor, who’d risen to fame by aggressively targeting sleazy tactics among stock traders.

Some wingnut bloggers smirked that a Democrat had been “got” in a sting after several Republican sex scandals. (Historically, male politicians of all parties, races, and nationalities have loved them hookers, through pretty much all of recorded history.)

Some progressive bloggers questioned why Spitzer, a fighting Democrat on the rise, was targeted by the highly politicized Bush “Justice” Department.

Some of the Spitzer commentators veer far from the original, simple scandal, digressing into what the writers/artists/comedians would really rather talk about. Among these digressions: wives who stand by their men too much; men with reputations on the line who do compulsive, dumb things.

I also want to digress to a side issue.

With every famous sex-work client who gets caught and pleas for public understanding, an opportunity is lost.

I want one of these guys to stand up forthrightly and announce:

“I’ve been a John. I AM a John. I admit it. No, I proclaim it.I liked it. I may do it again, maybe soon, maybe even today.

These women are fabulous. They deserve our utmost respect and admiration.

If my own darling daughter or beloved son chose this as a temporary or even a permanent career, I’d offer my sincerest support. And so would my dear wife. And so would my dear wife’s gardener/lover, and her driver/lover.

And so should all of you.

That’s why, as one of this state’s top public figures, I introduce a bill today to legalize, tax, and regulate this vital sector of our economy.

Furthermore, this bill will provide full health benefits for these workers, plus a great retirement plan.

And finally, I’m authorizing the state tourism board to launch a new campaign aimed at the clean, upscale sex tourist—especially if he’s paying in stable Euros. ‘Come for the brothels; stay for the restaurants.'”

I’m not in a position to create such legislation, only to advocate it.

And I might never get the opportunity to create such legislation.

Because I may never get elected to public office.

Because I’m admitting to have been a customer of escort services.

I’ve also had close friends who worked for escort services; some as service providers, some as office administrators.

I’d like them to have some more respect from our governments and our society, for the fine work they do and for the fine people they are.

And I’d like the profession’s private customers to become its public supporters.

…to mass culture? You know, those shows everybody saw, those records everybody heard, those books everybody claimed to have read? Gone the way of boutique-size bookstores, three-channel TV, and single-screen cinemas.

…rolls along, even into primary states. Elsewhere:

• Ron Sims would really like all King County agencies to solve socio-economic inequality. (Hey you: Stop scoffing. What if they could really do it?)
• A Seattle swimwear designer’s creations are featured in the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; as are the (fully costumed) Seafair Pirates.
• Please: If you must steal porn, use BitTorrent, not armed robbery.
• Jones Soda becomes the official fizzy drink of Alaska Airlines.
• Old nudist magazines used to sport such wholesome titles as Sunshine & Health. Now, some doctors claim a lack of Vitamin D-bearing rays really could weaken us.
• Gay-bashing attacks on Capitol Hill—on the rise.
• State GOP boss Luke Esser: Playing favorites or just incompetent?
• More fun news from my ol’ hometown: America’s first tribal TV station, streaming online.
• And the TV/movie-biz writers’ strike is over. Now Leno can go back to having other people to blame for his lameness.

…we remain snowless yet another day (and for the whole season?).

In other nooze:

• The city’s program of forcibly clearing homeless camps is inhumane, according to community advocates who spoke at a public hearing.
• The bureaucratic process of investigating the Seattle Police Dept.’s internal investigations might have conclusions soon.
• Rumors say Boeing just might shift some 787 assembly to San Antonio.
• And that Bush guy apparently said something Monday night, but nobody seems to remember what it was.

Can’t anybody stage a hiphop club night without somebody firing guns outside?

…if any of you find these morning headline thangs useful. I find them useful, at least. So without further ado:

• There’ll be another Sound Transit referendum. We just don’t know when or for how much.
• But there won’t be legislation to provide state funding for a Husky Stadium rebuild.
• There’s a heartwarming human interest story about several local radio vets and legends who’ve put together an online radio station with the aid of Seattle Community Colleges, streaming the sounds of Seattle airwaves’ past.
• More Port of Seattle shenanigans were recently unearthed, including a sweetheart deal to cover up cost overruns on the Sea-Tac third runway.
• Seattle’s homeless population is up 15 percent from the last “one night count.”