Rub 'n' Tug

Best Happy-Ending Parlors

OVERHEARD
Guy: I came for tomatoes and instead I get potatoes.
Attendant: It doesn't matter, cause either way you're going to making a stew.

Wanted: Model

"POP!"

Bubble Trouble
It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Ciao 4 Now

We only part to meet again. - John Gay

My Internet and cable bill is due on Friday and I can't pay it.

Guess how much money I have right now?

$250.

Yup. The last of my escort earnings cause I haven't seen any clients in a month.

A month.

To say I'm at a crossroads in my life is an understatement. I've no clue what to do, what can be done, or where my next dollar is going to come from, but I do know that I don't want to spend anymore time with strange men.

It's just too much to bear.

As much as it kills me to say it, I've Mr. Kamikaze to thank for my change of heart. Don't get me wrong - I was never cut out for this line of work - but being with him reminded me what it's like to be with someone I can truly connect with on a deeper level. It made being with other men I wasn't interested in that much harder. I turned down more calls than usual and suffered financially as a result. It's too bad he turned out to be such a disappointment - but given his track record - I was better off without him.

I don't know how much longer I'm going to have internet service, so I figure now is as good a time as any to put the kibosh on my blogging. It's eaten into too much of my time, and I feel like I need to make a fresh start, anyway. The Internet has exposed me to a lot of interesting things over the past 2-and-a-half years, and I'm proud of what I've amassed. I think my blogs serve as a snapshot of contemporary culture, and hopefully people will use them as a resource and source of inspiration.

I can never truly quit the web, so I imagine I'll pop up somewhere at sometime under a different name and I'm sure my voice will be familiar to those who've been hanging around here long enough. I'll always have an opinion and an eagerness to explore other peoples' exciting endeavours, so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if I became involved in creating a new, legitimate website focusing on all aspects of 21st century living.

Until then, I'll just have to cool my heels and pray for change in the right direction.

Ciao 4 now...

missdelite
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Psst - I'll be storing pics and links @ Uber Friendlee. It's not a blog, I swear!
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5 Little Words

If I had the means, I'd say these 5 little words.

I'd say them as often as possible, to people who needed to hear them and would value them the most.

I'd say them to people who are:
passionate,
intelligent,
talented,
creative,
innovative,
visionary,
driven,
daring,
kind and
sincere.

I'd say them freely and without a sense of obligation.

I'd feel good about saying them.

I wouldn't expect anything in return for saying them, knowing these words wouldn't be taken for granted.

I'd wish others said these words more often.

I'd know that by saying these words, I was doing my part to enrichen and strengthen - not only my community - but society at large.

I'd say these words to bolster necessary social structures that are already strained to their limit or to create ones that don't even exist.

I'd say these words to prevent good people from falling through the cracks.

I'd hope that these words would be passed on from one beneficiary to another.

What are these words?

How

much

do

you

need...?

?

?

?

But that's just me.
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Hey Life

What's the deal, here?

I'm still waiting for a sign things will be alright, but you give me nothing.

I'm running out of time and patience.

Am I going to be ok or not?

Your silence on the matter is not cool.

When will this torture end??
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New Posts

My caption: Diary of a Kept Man

Aperlaï Shoes
Gunn's Faves
Baptiste Giabiconi
Crash Explained
Hormone D
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Cash is Trash

Picasso Sells for Record $106.5 Million
COMMENTS
Even in terms of rich people economics this makes no sense to me. I love Picasso, don't get me wrong, but in todays buyers market I could probably buy a small island, a Gulfstream jet to transport me, and finance my supervillain-esque island compound for that price.

reply: Cash is trash.

Art can be sold overseas, is easily transported, and is untraceable. You can also claim it as assets on a balance sheet.

It's a better investment than something as louche as bouillon.

Art is always valuable as a vehicle for money laundering. Not that I think there's anything wrong with that from an ethical standpoint, it's just that's what it's for.

But in this case, when cubism goes out of fashion eventually, what's a billionaire to do? New art crazes are always happening, but they ain't making any more islands (if Dubai's real estate collapse goes as expected. Just bide your time...).

reply: Eh, eventually, the art market will fall apart, as it always does.

Buyers pick it up for "legacy" and to pad their egos. You're a pretty big pimp among rich people if you have a Picasso. How rich you are stops mattering so much at a certain point.

That's when you start buying art, bankrolling "grassroots" political machines, producing art, running philanthropies, etc.

When cubism stops being cool, you donate the paintings to a prominent museum.

It may also be a symptom of the stimulus boom. The smart money will dump cash when inflation is coming without many prospects for alternative investments.

I mean, it's a pretty fucking sweet deal when you can use ZIRP to buy Picassos for nothing. I'd do that deal many times over.

When political risk is high, it's also a great time to dump your cash reserves into easily smuggled assets.

Remind me to hire you as my accountant and general financial adviser when I attain my empire. You seem like you'd keep a cool head and manage to get me a sweet deal when the revolution overthrows my totalitarian regime. In all seriousness though, your perspective on art as an investment for the super-rich is really intriguing and has educated me as to why these people think a Picasso may be worth 0.1Bn dollars. It makes total sense in the same way that any other stable alternative to cash does.

reply: Accounting, you'd have to find someone else. General financial advisor, sure.

But I'd loooooove to have a Canadian work visa, at least for a time. Canada is the atheist Saudi Arabia with plenty of mines to boot.

A lot to love about the culture, at least.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sotheby's Preview Work of Tamara de Lempicka
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I'm Scared

You'd think a purse that looks like a gaping vagina would be full of money, don't you?

Hey, guys - guess who's officially a squatter? Me! I didn't pay my rent on Friday cause I don't have it. Guess who sucks (figuratively) at being an escort? I do!

I HATE MY JOB.

There's no personal fulfillment in trying to satisfy someone you don't care about. I don't care how many Happy Hooker stories you read. Belle de Jour and Diary of a London Call Girl can kiss my ass. I've become enlightened to the ways of privileged white female prostitutes, and they're playing in a whole other ball game than the rest of us. Apparently, white skin = better, even though I've left behind men with a smile on their face who'd beg to differ.

MEN LIKE ME. SOMETIMES EVEN TOO MUCH TO PAY FOR IT.

Unfortunately, I've no marketable skills. If I did, do you think I'd be doing what I do? I didn't choose my line of work - I fell into it out of necessity. And if you think I'm going to work three minimum wage jobs to pay the bills, then think again. I'd like to think there's more to life than slave labour, and I've more to offer the world than shiny toilets and a pleasant phone manner. I wasn't built to wipe some old guy's ass while he looks down my top and drools on my shoe. I'd rather hop on a bus with my last few bucks and ride to the middle of nowhere, curl up in a field and wait for the vermin to gnaw me to death.

I HAVEN'T SEEN A DENTIST IN TWO YEARS.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my Dad for telling my Mom, when I was in high school, that I didn't need a summer job cause my time would be better spent taking art classes and writing book reports. Those summers I spent struggling through "Pilgrim's Progress" and "The Prince and the Pauper" really didn't pay off. Those water colours I dabbled in aren't worth the cost of the supplies it took to make them. The summers I spent volunteering (my idea) at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Women's College and Sunnybrook hospitals, looked great on my resume, but never put a dime in my pocket in terms of helping me to garner future employment.

I'VE NEVER WORKED A 'REAL' JOB IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

And thanks, Dad, for pushing me to do pre-med at university even though I had no natural affinity for physics and chemistry and no desire to be a doctor. The ensuing disillusionment that settled in after dropping out, deepened my psychological development while forcing me to question my identity. If I wasn't going to be a doctor healing sick African babies (his dream, not mine), then who the fuck am I??

EVERYTHING MY FATHER EVER TOLD ME WAS TRUE TURNED OUT TO BE UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY FALSE.

And so here I am, destitute. My "busines", such as it was, never recovered from the dive it took when the markets crashed over a year-and-a-half ago. I'm like one of those small businesses that did just okay enough to survive before the recession, that's now cleared out, boarded up and a hollow landmark to someone else's livelihood. Funny, I've yet to see one media report about what happens to those people after they've finally thrown in the towel. I guess those kinds of stories don't sell rags or increase pageviews. But how the rich are sacrificing by cutting back junior's hockey practices from three times a week to two? Now that's a story! Run with it!

I DREAD CALLING MY CONDO MANAGER TOMORROW.

Needless to say, if things don't turn around for me in a dramatic way over the next few days, I'm out on my ass. I don't know where I'll end up, cause I'm too scared to think that far ahead. (Liar - it's all I've been thinking about for months now.) I hope I can continue to stay where I am, and get out of the business in a way that doesn't turn my life upside down, but I have to say at this point, it looks like it's going to take a fucking miracle. I'm supposed to meet someone tomorrow night who's well-connected and could possibly open some doors for me, but he's not exactly reliable.

I'LL FUCKING TAKE WHAT I CAN GET.

Oh, and one more thing?

I DON'T FUCKING DESERVE THIS.

At Par

1.00 USD =

1.06 CAD

Does this mean we're even now??

Canadian Dollar Weakens as Central Bank Warn's It's Too Strong

We Mean Business

The Truth About the Wage Gap
An ex-boyfriend once asserted that women were their own worst enemy when it came to money. He asserted that if women would just speak up, they would see the benefit on their checks. He was only half right. [...]

COMMENTS
however, jobs are harder to come by nowadays. what i'm noticing is happening now is that people who do try to negotiate with their employer or threaten to walk have a blemish on their record with HR and the company can just turn around and say "oh well, if you have been talking to someone else, then we'll just let you go anyway without severance" ...the HR blemish turns into an ebola virus.
it's good to know when to say when, and when to walk out. if you don't have a back up plan, or try to play both ends against each other, don't think everyone is going to play nice and magically respect you because of your business savvy and negotiating prowess. all employment is 'at will', and they can and will let you go at their leisure.

The truth is that men just ask more. That doesn't mean sexism doesn't play a role, but women need to think about money more. When I was right out of college I found out that every single guy I knew asked for more money for his first post-college job (including people at government jobs where that isn't an option) and not one of the women I knew did. A lot of guys didn't get the salary raise, but those that did were already in a stronger position for future raises and other jobs.

I asked my boss for a promotion and a raise at my annual review in March. When she said she couldn't due to the economy's effects on our business, I began to look elsewhere. I ended up applying for a transfer to a higher position in a different department at our company in June, and per HR policy, I had to tell my boss. Less than a week later, she offered me a promotion and a 10 percent raise. Even with the economy in its current shape, I think it's important for us all to remember what we're worth and shoot to do better.

I've asked for raises in the past, and I've typically gotten it. That part (for me) is all fine and good. I've also been at jobs where I've discovered that other employees who had the same job title/experience/responsibilities were making more than me. Even if it was just $.50/hr more, it was still enough to be infuriating.

So, if you're a woman, and you want power at work, you need to be forceful, like a man. However, if you ask to be paid like a man, you are deemed too pushy, and it works against you.
*head explodes*
What's that saying? Something about women have to work twice as hard for half the credit? And oh, don't be a bitch.
***************************************************
Do Women Self Sabotage at Work?
I make 15K less than the man who passed this position on to me. Fif.teen.grand.

And my company keeps pulling this, "we know you deserve a big, HUGE raise... but we can't afffoooorrrrrdddd it right now." Meanwhile they're hiring positions below me and often paying them more (my company is pretty gossipy about salaries).

I think "Pitch Like a Girl" would be a good investment...
_____________________________________________

NEW POST
Throat Punch
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VIDEO
...way more fun than it has any right to be.

Dear Diary...

IT SUCKS THAT I CAN'T EVEN AFFORD A NEW BELT.

Make it Together

Is the Recession Ruining Your Relationship?
[jezebel.com - Jul.19/09]

COMMENTS
Slumdog_Mamabear says:
I think this article missed the mark if it was attempting to resonate with a large group of readers. What the recession has done to mangle my relationship has nothing to do with wine lists or the inability to go running with the bulls. When I married my husband we used to joke that we would happily live under a bridge together.
But this recession hit at the same time as my medical problems did. So not only is he left figuring out how to stay employed in an unemployable field, but we are saddled with medical debt as well.
Financial difficulties don't hurt relationships because we are all wishing we could go to nicer restaraunts. But because it can create a perfect storm of role confusion, guilt, resentment and fear that would tear apart even the closest of couples.
What dopes those two are. Crying into their 30 dollar wines and realizing that their significant other was just....boring.
****************************************
WashingMyHair says:
@Slumdog_Mamabear: You are my twin. It's been the same for me and my husband. We started dating when we had no money and didn't feel entitled when we started to make a decent living. But then, his wages started to stagnate, then decrease, right when I started suffering from a few medical issues that not only brought on medical bills, but affected my career and income.

It's been hard on our relationship for the same reasons you cited. But I"m also not too ashamed to say that I also slightly resent that my whole life, I've never even been close to achieving the "American Dream". Maybe that's because we've worked hard and played by the rules.

It sometimes seems that the American dream is only for members of the lucky sperm club or people who hurt others in order to get ahead.
****************************************
Slumdog_Mamabear says:
@WashingMyHair: I am slightly embarrassed to say that reading your comment made me tear up. I am so sorry that you have been through some of this stuff as well, but to hear someone reach out from the ether and say they understand means a lot.
We really thought we were on our way to that dream. We were comfortable enough that we even had two kids at the beginning of our marriage. (They are still babies now). But with Papabears industry collapsing and me hardly able to take care of the kids, let alone a job, it just all seems so scary.
But I have to have faith that we can pull through it TOGETHER. We may not have much right now but we don't have anything if we give up.

Play Whuff

Tara Hunt, author

Reviews
Embrace the chaos! The Whuffie Factor weaves stories from Moleskine, 37Signals, Threadless, Willitblend, and Gary Vaynerchuk into a compelling story of the way business is now done. Tara doesn’t just talk about it, of course, she does it herself.

Social capital may be the most powerful currency of the twenty-first century, and this book is a guide to its care and feeding. Bursting with energy and enthusiasm, Tara Hunt shows us how to win friends and influence people in a Web 2.0 world.

You might not be familiar with the term Whuffie before reading this book. I know I wasn't. It supposedly stands for "the store of social capital that is the currency in the digital world." Marketing today in the New Media is about building relationships. It's about give and take. It's not about "in your face" or just throwing money into advertising campaigns. By reading this book you should better understand what online marketing has migrated to be about and why it is important to go with the flow.

Whuffie is slang for social capital: your reputation, your credibility, your personal bankability. It's not as simple as the number of followers you have on Twitter, because that doesn't necessarily indicate your trustworthiness - there's plenty of spammers who've mastered the art of the followback. It's not as simple as the number of posts you've made on a forum somewhere, because that just indicates you're really good at clicking the Submit button.
Tara writes about marketing in new ways that I'd never considered. Marketing wasn't just a bunch of sexist guys designing magazine ads of barely-clothed women holding their product in provocative positions. Marketing meant understanding that places like forums, web sites and Twitter are, as The Whuffie Factor explains:
"...a simple but powerful online community where thousands of buying decisions are made every single day."
This message isn't just for companies: it's for employees. "Who cares," you ask, "if I'm not selling a product?" Even if you're not working a street corner, you're selling yourself. Future employers, future clients, and future coworkers are taking stock of your every action.
The Whuffie Factor demystifies the workings of social capital and marketing, and these explanations work great for IT geeks. Let's face it: we suck at networking, and we suck at marketing. We need all the help we can get. This book is the help, and we don't need a marketing background to understand how it applies to us.
The chapter "Become a Part of the Community You Serve" and the book's repeated message about turning the bullhorn around especially resonate with me, and it illustrates the problems with so many IT communities. Tara discusses how she worked with a web site to throw away their imaginary user profiles and connect directly with several real users instead using their own product. They became more and more intertwined with their own customers, and as a result, built better products. I've learned these lessons personally, and I found myself nodding over and over - and not because I was going to sleep.
Throughout the book, Tara gives simple, straightforward explanations of how to get whuffie, what happens if you do it right, and what happens if you do it wrong.

I'm using The Whuffie Factor right now to help a client understand the broader principles at stake beyond their current weak benchmarks in terms of external links, and other mentions of company resources online.
As a practitioner of search marketing (what is often misunderstood to be a narrowly technical field), increasingly I see the companies who increase their whuffie across the board to be very resilient in terms of the bottom-line-enhancing digital referrals they consistently get from search engines and similar sources.
It's all interconnected.
The value of this book isn't in proving that the author herself used social media tactics to promote her own business (those examples are self-reinforcing, in a way). It's that old-school companies who now hope that you can gaze at the keyword density of a few key pages on a website, and increase "rank" and "traffic," need the practical insights here that add up to a much broader audience building strategy: increase your Whuffie.
The Whuffie concept is well chosen and will help reinforce your sense of just how universally important it is to build your social currency, in any walk of life.

By traditional marketing standards, this book is everything I detest. It has an annoyingly cute and trendy title. It is about a subject I think I already know a lot about.
Too make things worse, the first paragraph inside the fly cover starts off "The book that catches the crest of Web 2.0 and shows how any business can harness its power ..." If I were browsing books at a bookstore, that would probably be enough for me to put the book right back on the shelf, assuming I would have taken it off the shelf in the first place.
However, Tara Hunt sent a message out on Twitter asking for people to review the book, and because Tara has incredible whuffie and knows how to use it, I agreed to review the book and I'm glad I did.

Before starting a coworking space, I interviewed Tara Hunt, and was suitably informed. I told her I wanted to keep up with what she's doing, and she said "Oh, just follow me on Twitter."
I'm not exactly an internoob, but from what I'd heard, Twitter was a gossip engine for adolescent shut-ins. But I joined, and followed, and initially thought my initial suspicion was justified. There was a lot of "OMG, I can't believe the way my hair looks today" and "saw the cutest shoes at Macy's" and "having lunch with @bff", etc. And then, "registering for this conference (link)".
Turned out to be a conference in my industry. One I'd never heard of. And in two days. I registered, went to the event, discovered there was a huge segment of people I'd never reached before. Because I'm not using the channels they pay attention to.
Since then, I've been learning all I can about the statusphere and its importance to growing a business in the 21st century. Tara Hunt's new book is an essential primer for anyone whose business is dependent on the good will of their customers, suppliers, partners, and team members. Which is to say: all of them.
I don't care if you're a one-man-brand or a 20 billion dollar corporation, if you don't master these fundamental community-sustaining competencies, you will fail.

Interview with Tara Hunt
Tara Hunt is a name that means a lot to Social Media experts but not only. Enterprise marketers are also - or should be - familiar with her earlier attempts at promoting a new form of marketing philosophy entitled Pinko Marketing, the aim of which was to prolong the work that had been initiated by the cluetrain manifesto team at the end of the 1990's. Beside her involvement in Barcamp and the coworking project, the San Francisco-based Canadian online marketer has got back to writing a new book The Whuffie Factor which is now available in the UK. I have asked Tara to present her new opus to our Orange readers in this exclusive interview:

Tara, I saw in Twitter and on your blog that you were preparing a new book entitled "the Whuffie factor". Why did you choose that name and what is the message behind it?
The name evolved for me and was suggested by the publisher. The working title of the book was 'How to Be a Social Capitalist: building your business with online communities' but the publisher thought that social capital was too vague and meant too many things. When he saw that I told the story of Cory Doctorow's Whuffie*, John Mahaney (editor) shopped the word around and found that people really responded to it. First they would laugh, then after the term was explained, they would remember it. The Whuffie Factor means, in basic terms, that people should pay attention to their actions in online communities.
(*Whuffie is a term taken from SF writer Cory DOctorow's book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.)

And what has it got to do with Social Media and marketing?
Well, the key point to understand about social media is that it is meant to be social. Facebook and Twitter and Flickr weren't built as platforms for sales pitches, they were built as platforms for human interaction: conversations, relationship building, trust, support, etc. The Whuffie Factor is about how well you do on that level. The 'marketing' part will just happen naturally in these communities because people are talking about their everyday lives, looking for guidance on their purchases and choices and looking to get that guidance from their trusted circle of friends. If you've built good relationships, you will do well. The book is about how you get to that point.

Before we delve into Social Media, can you please tell us why enterprises have to do marketing differently?
I don't think this is news at all, but people have been talking about this little thing called the Internet for a little while now. And what the Internet opened up was the ability for individuals to increase the size of their networks and expand their conversations. In doing that, the one-way communication of mass media started to lose it's power. There have been a few good studies lately that show that Word of Mouth recommendations between friends and 'people like me' are only getting stronger. Therefore, the marketing that uses pure bullhorn type techniques (ads, SEO, etc.) are missing out on a huge opportunity.

So Social media can help us get to grips with this new way of marketing products and services. Can you explain?
It's about taking the marketing out of it all together for the time being. I don't even like calling the fantastic interactions I have online 'social media'. Prior to online communities, I didn't call my relationships 'social face to faces'. The way you can come to grips is by taking off your marketers hat and putting on your customer hat. When you hang out with your friends, what do you talk about? I'm guessing you are open and honest with them. You share stuff with them. You ask them about their lives. You figure out what their needs are so you can help out as a friend. And...when the time is right...you can help one another out. There are just more sophisticated tools available so you can do this with more people. That's it.

As a consequence, Social Media isn't just a toy for geeks, it's serious stuff for serious business people. Does it mean that the role of managing communities is the job of the future?
I'm torn on that one. On the one hand, having the role puts priority on it. It says, "community is important to us, so we're paying an employee to make sure it is taken care of." On the other hand, by delegating that role to one person, a company loses many opportunities to build multiple relationships between customers and the company.

So should we start considering pricing our products in Whuffie rather than dollars or pounds?
Ha. in my opinion, no. I'd like to stay away from measuring it in the near future. Cory Doctorow, who came up with the term, warned us of the inherent problems of measuring whuffie in his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The biggest issue is that, once measured, it is totally gameable.

If you had only one piece of advice for our readers to get the Whuffie factor right, what would it be?
Imagine yourself at a party. How do you act if you want to meet people and make friends? Do you enter the party and just talk about yourself and leave once you get what you want? Or do you slowly enter the conversations, listening to people, joining in when you have something to contribute, asking people about themselves, exchanging jokes and being light-hearted? Probably the latter. That's also how you need to approach online communities if you want to raise your Whuffie.
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NEW POSTS
Olafur Eliasson
Diddo Velema
Civilization
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You Are a Moron

Ballard Camera's going out of business sale is "officially" the "We Quit" sale. It's on tags around the store. Note that this shop is about three or four blocks away from the former location of "Mandrake's Antiques, Custom Furniture and Great Things" which announced their closing with signs reading "Uncle." [flickr.com - Jne.09]

Store Closings

[flickr.com - Jan.09]

Forbes isn't doing Elisabeth Eaves any favours

The Recession is Great
by Elisabeth Eaves
[Forbes - Jne.09]

Low prices. Nice people. What's not to like?

This week I refinanced my mortgage at a new, better rate, lowering my monthly expenses with a stroke of the pen. Even as I was doing the paperwork, I had to dodge calls trying to offer me similar and even better rates. If you're creditworthy these days, banks can't shovel money at you fast enough.

This got me thinking about all the other ways in which this recession might be a good thing. Job losses and property devaluations have inflicted much pain, but relentless focus on catastrophe leaves out the flip side of market logic: Prices will tumble until goods find buyers, making it a very good time to go shopping. The recession's benefits also go beyond the purely tangible. Last week I met an artist, Kendrick Mar, who compared the downturn to a "purifying fire." We were talking about the end of high prices for bad work. But there's something else going on too: a burning away of dross in our personal and working lives.

To start with the most literal example, there's a global sale on, so if your own income hasn't plummeted, the getting is good. Interest rates are down. Property prices too. Residential and commercial rents, even in New York City, are down--not, perhaps, south of 14th Street in Manhattan, but elsewhere in the city, mere mortals are negotiating better deals with their landlords, or moving to neighborhoods they had thought were out of reach.

Financial blogger and investment adviser Barry Ritholtz singles out a few more goods that are going cheap: boats, jewelry, Picassos and Monets, second homes. "Make a list of the favorite things that you want, and put in a low-ball offer, and tell people the offer is good for six months," he says. "Your spending habits should be countercyclical; You don't buy, buy, buy when the economy is great."

The downturn has procured a related outbreak of pleasant behavior: Tradesmen, salespeople and restaurant reservationists have lost their standoffish attitude. "Walk into a car dealer now, and that whole veneer of obnoxiousness is gone," Ritholtz says.

GM is going out of business, their bulky, expensive-to-run vehicles to be lost, perhaps, in the purifying fire. But new ventures are starting too. Michael Benstock, CEO of Superior Uniform Group, explains what his company has been up to. Faced with shrinking demand--higher unemployment means less need for uniforms--Superior Uniform laid off staff and posted a loss in the first quarter of 2009.

On the other hand, it's cutting deals with vendors and looking for other companies to buy. "We feel the timing is great for acquisitions," he says. "There are a lot of weakened competitors out there." And after nine decades in the garment trade, the company last year branched out. It needed to outsource more customer service functions to save money and figured other companies did too. So it turned an in-house call center in El Salvador into a separate business, The Office Gurus, that now serves not only Superior Uniform but also other U.S. firms. "Our timing was impeccable," Benstock says, though that was as much because of luck as design. The 150 Salvadorans employed by The Office Gurus have profited.

Then there are the opportunities for change in individual careers. If you still work for a newly downsized company, in all likelihood there is not quite enough labor to go around. That can be exhausting, but it's also a chance to seize new responsibilities. Raises may not come back into fashion for a while, but you can be first in line when they do.

A layoff can be gut-wrenching. But it's also a chance to ask yourself: Were you really happy about the job before it ended? If not, what can you now change that you couldn't before? The Web magazine RecessionWire (subtitle: "The Upside of the Downturn"), whose founders were themselves laid off from other companies, has nursed this idea of reinvention over the last half year, with stories on poverty-provoked spiritual awakenings and musings on next steps. As adults we rarely get to ask ourselves, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" The unemployed may fantasize about financial stability, but the fully employed fantasize about having just a darn minute to think. All the focus on "Plan B" is infectious, causing even the employed to ask themselves, if only as a parlor game, what would I do?

The juiciest personal recessionary benefit, though, may be getting out of things we didn't want to do in the first place by pleading financial hardship. A friend's back-of-beyond wedding? Too expensive. A conference in another city? Company cutbacks say no: Watch the Webcast instead and be home in time for dinner. With so many people out of work, the pressure to keep up financial appearances has disappeared. It's easier than ever to gracefully decline going out for a mediocre $60 meal. We should have better aligned our budgets with our desires all along, but now feel more bold about doing so.

In my neighborhood, the number of empty storefronts has crept upward over the last six months. I wonder if I should be alarmed. It's eerie, but also suggests a neighborhood on pause, taking a breath before chugging along in some new direction. Vanity Fair's James Wolcott, writing recently on the glories of 1970s New York, noted that the population shrank by 10% over the decade. He observed:

"It was hell on the tax base but, for those who migrated to New York and secured a foxhole while the city bled out, terminal conditions weren't all bad. There were upsides to a downward spiral. Having fewer people clogging the scenery aired out the city nicely, opening corner pockets of private and public space where all sorts of termite creativity could take place, and did."

We may be in for more crime and grime, but also more breathing room as some of the hype and waste goes up in flame. Economists are predicting a recovery, anywhere from an optimistic "it's already started" to a cautious 2011. Enjoy the recession while it lasts.

Elisabeth Eaves is a deputy editor at Forbes, where she writes a weekly column.

COMMENTS
"We may be in for more crime and grime, but also more breathing room as some of the hype and waste goes up in flame."
What a ludicrous piece of crap.
Here's hoping the writer never has to face down a mugger or carjacker.
Keep the doors locked, hon!

One thing Elisabeth failed to mention (by design I assume) is that such a deep recession caused by industrial greedheads and their compliant government is also a chance for workers and unemployed people to unite in a cause. There is time and motivation to topple the structure that favors the wealthy and change it to favor the middle and working classes. Check out United Professionals.

I'm glad the recession is working out so well for someone. My spouse lost his GM job in hospitality four months ago. He's spent his entire career managing hotels/resorts and now can't even get an interview for a position at a limited-service property (ie, Hampton Inn). When we relocated for the job he lost, I left my job and didn't return to work because we had a baby and he was working 90-100 hour weeks. Now I'm looking for a job and can't get an interview because I've been a full-time parent for two years! We're both well-educated, hard workers who have lived well within our means (our child's crib and other furniture are hand-me-downs from friends/family; our house is extremely modest but we do have a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage to pay). We have some savings, but we can't keep going for long with both of us out of work. My spouse has worked hard for over 20 years to build his career, which he loves. Your comment about layoffs is insulting and cruel. Enjoy your good fortune of full employment and a great credit rating for now, because it can end in an instant. Oh, and do our friends who are still employed in hospitality (most of whom have taken pay cuts) a favor--travel and leave big tips.

You are horribly insensitive! People are getting laid off left and right and you go on to cheer about shopping and jewelry. People are struggling to put food on the table and you think this recession is great?? What is the matter with you? What about all of the murder-suicides we are hearing about in the news? People are SUFFERING and you think this recession is great? What is with your "Let them eat cake" attitude? Again, you are horribly horribly insensitive.

Here's why Elisabeth's job isn't safe: The Sun Sets on BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune

Bankers and currency speculators have been crooks ever since Jesus threw the money-changers out of the Temple, and probably long before. We should have done much the same, and in fact that's what we ought to be doing now.
What part did Forbes Magazine play in lulling the public into inaction, and thereby paving the way to the current debacle - either by what they printed, or by what they refrained from printing?

Ms. Eaves,
You are a moron. The recession is great? I graduated from college a year and a half ago and have already been laid off from three jobs.
I guess the bright side is how amazing it was that I was able to find and get hired by three different jobs.
Many of my friends who worked very hard during their college years received job offers before they graduated. Most of them were actually laid off before starting one day of work.
I had to move in with my parents so that I could remove rent and utilities from my already growing debt. At 24 I am starting my life $27,000 in debt between student loans and credit cards.
Please stop writing about things that you clearly know nothing about.

This is really a phenomenal article. Sometimes you might forget just how staggeringly out of touch the top 2% of wealthy Americans are with the other 98%.
This is not optimism. This is not a good thing.
Remember - for every good deal you are getting, someone is losing money. People are losing their life savings, their homes, their jobs.
This is nothing short of vulturism. Picking at the carcass of the economy looking for the good tidbits before all the other vultures land and join in.
Elisabeth - you must feel really good about yourself right now. You've got a good job and good credit and the opportunity to profit from the misfortune of others.
Personally, I don't feel so hot. As my assets evaporated, my good credit soon followed. The value of my primary asset - my house, which my family and I enjoy living in - has plummeted. Now my debt to equity ratio is so off that my credit rating is falling fast. Despite having a good six-figure job, I'm talking to a lawyer about bankruptcy.
I just hope when I'm done, I can scrape up enough cash for one of those bargain Monets you're talking about here.
PS - Know anyone that wants a bargain on a few hundred bottles of well cellared California wines? I've got to sell the wine to pay the lawyers so I can keep the house with the empty wine cellar. I have to sell them at a loss, of course, so that bargain hunters like you can enjoy the benefits of the recession.

If you and/or your family members have health or disability issues, you and they are going to suffer big time no matter how thrifty you are.
If you're female and over 55, nobody cares how qualified you are, nor how hard you work, nor how pleasant and helpful you are to everyone. Nobody. They give the good techie jobs to a male under 35. And they give the clerical jobs to somebody who isn't "overqualified." Does Eaves never expect to live past 55?
My finances are already pared to the bone and have been so for a very long time. The recession hit the IT profession before it hit everybody else, and it hasn't been pleasant.
And no, I am not saddled with debt. Due to previous government tax and regulatory policies, the entire industry I was working in came to be outsourced overseas. At my last job, after I was laid off, I applied to work in India at a fraction of my previous salary. If I had been hired at that time, I would have gone, without complaint. But I never got a call back.
About half of my savings was lost in the crash. Evidently, it doesn't help all that much to be frugal unless you are also lucky, or have a lot of inside information. I didn't.
I'm trying very hard to make a career change at my age and it isn't easy, and at the same time, I'm too "overqualified" (i.e., old) to be given a blue-collar or pink-collar job with insurance benefits. Just today I saw a job that I badly wanted given to a much younger male. Despite all my efforts, somehow I wasn't even given an opportunity to apply for that particular job, and I'm feeling absolutely sick about that. And yes, it is a job that I am very much qualified for.
When just about everybody gets into their new, frugal lifestyle, what's the first piece of useless, time-wasting, money-wasting clutter that most people cut from their budgets?
You guessed it - magazine subscriptions!
Here comes the "purifying fire"!

I think it's the retirees I sympathize with the most. Their homes are worth less, their IRAs and 401ks funds are worth less, most are too old to go back to work even if anybody would hire them, and you can't make a dime on savings accounts at today's extremely low interest rates. I must be getting paranoid because what I initially viewed as a disaster brought on by a government asleep at the switch and greed-driven financial "wizards", I'm now beginning to see as possibly a planned occurrence.

WoW!!!!
What a bunch of nonsense. I was laid off from the engineering firm I was working for and I started my own firm with one of the other guys that got laid off the same day I did. It's been difficult and we are barely making it so I guess I can say that I'm not unemployed.
I sold my truck to get out of the $570/mo payment and had to pay $2,000 just to sell it because I could not get what it was worth. I am selling my other vehicle as well so I can be payment free. This must be the glorious fire sale she is referring to. My how wonderful it is to get stuff at such cheap prices from people who just can't afford them anymore! Why just look, America has become a gigantic pawn shop of goodies. How good this is for me, I can even buy a $300,000 home for next to nothing. Isn't this glorious?
Unemployment used to be for those that failed to apply themselves or had drug and alcohol issues. These days the best of the best can find themselves out in the cold. I made it through eight rounds of layoffs before I got the boot so I must have been good at what I do. Ironicaly those who got 86'd before me got 3 months severance but by the time they got to the rest of us, they were out of severance funds. That's special.
This economy is hurting "GOOD PEOPLE" and there is nothing good about that.

You must be kidding me. Perhaps this is a humor piece, and I am not getting it. I do not see how in the long run that this recession is good for anyone -- except maybe a financial vulture.
Most people are struggling to stay afloat, survive, and remain sane; and while times like this allow us to pause and reflect upon the things which matter most to us, it's not what I would say, oh, a likable situation.
Sometimes it is as dire as it looks, and rather than being, what I will graciously say, "eternally optimistic," perhaps it's best to call what we are facing what it really is -- a fine mess 20-plus years in the making, of which we have yet to see the end.

Ms. Eaves,
You're right, I've noticed that it's so much easier to get a good table at a four-star restaurant these days. And if you can't pay for the meal because you've lost your job and your home went into foreclosure you can always try and sneak out through the bathroom window.
P.S. Mortgage rates have gone through the roof in the month or so since you refinanced. I guess those who were less timely are SOL.

This is a vapid, stupid little girl. Like so many others in both the print and broadcast media, she is an icon of the decline and impending death of the so called main stream media.
Steve, can't you afford some adults?

Oh yes, this recession is so wonderful, if you live in a gated community and never leave it (just order the Picasso paintings online). Nice people? I see hateful people along my commute every day, cursing at me and each other in traffic more than ever, and it's obvious at least to me that it is only a matter of time before major spikes in the crime rate begin. But I can buy some million dollar paintings at a discount. Wonderful. My employment situation is unaffected so far and technically the lower prices have improved my standard of living for now, but I believe this country is in a very precarious situation and my fear of civil unrest is a little more significant than my elation over discounted art and jewelry (two things that are ALWAYS a ripoff anyway). JMHO!

An amazingly vapid piece. Anyone who cites NYC in the 70's as some "glory time" has no grasp of the city's reality of the era. I was there and entire areas of the city were effectively out of control (and served as inspiration for the "Death Wish" genre of movies). Have fun at the unemployment office Ms. Eaves and enjoy that "purifying fire" - you may learn that its burns hurt like hell.

Yes, it's "juicy" to be able to "get out of things" we didn't want to do because we're unemployed, underwater and in ruinous debt.
Sorry kids, I didn't want to pay your tuition anyway. Now I can't.
Sorry hon, I didn't want to pay the mortgage this month anyway.
Sorry taxman, I didn't want to pay your inflated bill...
You get the picture, right? I'm so glad the great transfer of wealth from 40 and 50 somethings to 20 and 30 somethings is a cause of some rejoicing on their part. Keep up the good work!
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