Its not Apathy its Anemia

Bet these Mole People had some cheap tasty mushrooms!

Good afternoon all, Minx here and I have a story to tell you. 

Now, I have loaded this post up with lots of links.  So be sure to check them out!

I went to the doctor yesterday, first time in 4 years and got some results from blood work I had done last week. What can I say, things are tough and having no insurance gets to be a problem for those of us who fall through the cracks of income limits for government assistance.

All this time, I thought these feelings of indifference, apathy and exhaustion were symptoms of a depressed progressive stuck with a horrible lame ass president, a bad economy, a PLUB war on women, no real representation in Washington and no hope for any change for the better. Come to find out I have a severe case of anemia. Who would have thought? But you know, those reasons mentioned above would give anyone with a pulse and a sense of their political surroundings cause to feel…indifference, apathy and exhaustion. On Wednesday the President will be giving a speech, laying out all the ways for the shit to really hit the fan.  I am not looking forward to it because my spidie senses tell me that we are truly f’d.

This week I noticed something at the grocery store, and I wanted to share it with you. Maybe you can help me out…cause I just don’t understand the reason behind it.

Okay, my family loves mushrooms…we go through those little cans of Walmart Great Value Sliced Mushrooms almost as fast as we devour our stash of Peppermint Patties tucked inside the big iron pot in the pantry. These little mushrooms have always been 52 cents a can. This week they went up to 84 cents a can. WTF? How can this be? I thought, perhaps it is a Walmart thing, so I went to Ingle’s and lo and behold, the little store brand cans of mushrooms were 84 cents there too.  I mean, these are mushrooms. There is no civil war going on where they are farmed, no energy shortage that would affect a crop grown in the dark, there is no embargo on horse manure, no natural disasters or nuclear meltdown to impede production, no delusional dictator oppressing his people from his tent, honestly…what could be the reason for such a huge increase in price?

I know things are getting more costly because of oil prices and transportation cost, but this is a drastic change and really symbolizes something more.  Mushrooms are basically grown in dung…am I right? So it goes to say that things are so bad, even stuff made from shit is getting to damn expensive. Think about it. In a literary sense, those generic cans of mushrooms represent our basic “working man…lower to middle class” lives. We aren’t out buying top of the line, designer chic, upper 1% brand of mushrooms. These are plain and unsophisticated mushrooms. Mushrooms for the “Common Man.” And now even that is getting out of reach. Just like our basic necessities, the cost to live this pathetic meager existence is just too damn high. No matter what they say.

I saw somewhere that gas is expected to go up to 5 bucks a gallon this summer. Hell, we may need to revert to the good old days, when horse and buggy were the main mode of transportation. That actually might work out for the best, because then we will have our own horse manure to grow those “mushrooms for the common man.” Cue the Copland music…and ready the basement…we got us some farming to do. ”Winning the Future?”  Ugh, is there no other choice but to go all in? As it stands now, whether you back the inexperienced ambivalent absent jackass or the pachyderm hot turds on ice, we are sure to reach the same outcome…busted flat and on skid row.

Illustration from The Grapes of Wrath drawn by Thomas Hart Benton