Rice and Beans and Gasolines

I asked for water
And she gave me gasoline.
--Tommy Johnson

Gasoline must have been cheap in them days.

Today in Desert Hot Springs gas costs $3.17 a gallon. No more happy motoring. Every mile is dear. And it's only going to get worse. Yet most Americans still cling desperately to the notion that we can continue driving and shopping and living the way we've grown used to.

The rich, of course, can continue with it. The roads will soon belong to them. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That's a fact.

But it's not all bad. The rich (and those who pretend they are) eat steaks and cream parfaits. Their arteries clog up and they keel over.

Those of us less favored make do with rice and beans, beans and rice. Eight pounds of dried pinto beans and ten pounds of rice. That's about 160 meals.

And spinach. Add the spinach and you've got everything you need.

Spinach is one of those wonderful foods you need to be careful of. Be sure to eat only the organic kind. Agribusiness spinach is one of the most heavily pesticided crops.

Poverty doesn't necessarily mean doing without, unless you're so poor you don't know where the next bite will come from. Ordinary poverty -- a scarcity of money -- just means doing everything on a smaller scale. Your bills are in tens instead of hundreds.

I'm trying to rig up an outdoor antenna for a television. Do away with cable and the cable bill and you don't miss a thing, unless you're a big fan of the Numismatics Channel. Or "Girls Gone Wild."

As the twilight deepens my mind inclines toward zaftig women. "Zaftig" is a Yiddish term meaning "fleshy," though most who use it today incorrectly think it's a synonym of "fat."

Kirstie Alley is fat. Elisabeth Shue is zaftig, on top of having done her undergrad work at Wellesley and majored in political science at Harvard. She's very well qualified.

However, some very well qualified experts have confused zaftig and fat, as Tommy Johnson did when he sang:

Big fat mama, meat shakin' on her bones;
Every time her meat shakin' some
Skinny mama lose they home.