this time around, it's locally felt, globally reported, and yet people are still charging their credit cards because they want to "live life, dammit".

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This time around, people are coming off of a sense that they really could get this stuff, and often did. Luxury became accessible to the masses, and the things that weren't accessible tended not to affect people's quality of life in any significant way (i.e. I couldn't have the bejeweled cell phone, but I could still have just as good a cell phone). Now, those of us who were just about hanging on to middle class face real and significant decline in our quality of life because of the state of the economy. I just can't stomach waste and excess in other people when that's happening. I don't look up to them; I see what they have and assume they must be assholes. Unfair, certainly, but I've had enough of unfairness to our hardworking selves and think we deserve a little more of the opportunity and peace of mind that these folks squander on an hourly basis.

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Think of an average teenage girl from a middle class family watching Gossip Girl, it probably makes her feel like crap because her parents dont have those financial means. I think its kind of irresponsible.

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But there's something about the garish, ostentatious opulence of bygone days that's like candy to me. When I see period films, for example, and peasants find their way into a richly appointed royal court? Or even portrayals of more modern times - like a film from the 30s or 40s that show men in expensive suits and women dripping with jewels. Those portrayals are over-the-top, almost visceral.

Something about that really resonates with me when it's in a historic context. It could just be that I recognize, despite the fact that I am a low-on-the -totem-pole corporate drone, that I have it better than many of my predecessors. I have high-speed information, fast fashion, and the ability to make phone calls anywhere, anytime. I don't have to make or mend my own clothes. I can bathe daily. I can move about freely while menstruating. I don't have to worry about leprosy or polio.

My dining room may be a particle-board folding table and an area rug; my bed may be a mattress on the floor. But I have it really good in 2009, compared to what it was like to be a working stiff for most of history. So that may be why I'm secretly fascinated by displays of opulence in bygone days--back then, the wealthy were the only ones who had the luxuries that I have now.

It's what separates historic portrayals from the blinged-out, ostentatious, tone-deaf displays of wealth that we see today--like GOOP, and executives that cry that they can't live on $500,000 a year. That feels like rubbing it in my face. Historical portrayals don't.

I'm weird that way.

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