We knew it was gonna be.

I think there's light at the end of the tunnel. In 2008, the economy tanked. In 2009 the Writer's Guild went on strike and we observed something interesting in Hollywood - the 3-chip DV losers all went crying home to momma while everybody who had managed to stake out a network of referrals and friends hunkered down and survived and ended up getting more work at the end of the day. The industry is the same but there's a lot fewer pikers in it.

Pike Place Market is subsidized to fuck and favors scrabblers to megacorps. A giant shattered mall, though? Nobody needs to subsidize that.

The last time vinyl fucking mattered it cost $7.99. Cassettes were $9.99. Then CDs came out and somehow they were $15.99 because fuck you. Now? Now everybody buys downloads for around $10. If you want a CD, it's like $11 on Amazon. Vinyl? Fuckin' $20-$30.

Now -we can get into the hipster dumbness that is driving vinyl sales. I'm not a fan. However, vinyl is an object. It's something you can fetish over. It's something you can lord over your friends and hold close to your heart. And if it costs 3x what downloads cost it's also making the artist a lot more money.

I've been saying for years that nobody wants to buy a $25 DVD player. Nobody needs a $25 DVD player. Now that we're largely consuming media through our phones we're done with all that. Thus dues the phone become the one large expense we have to deal with while everything else becomes optional. So the question is: how much disposable crap do you want in your life?

I split from minimumwage at that one forever and no regrets. She had some positive things to say but she was also a thief and a drug addict who hated everyone who wasn't a thief and a drug addict. My view has not changed: people who buy expensive things buy them because they expect to have them for a while and worldwide, there is no manufacturer held in such prestige across so many industries as American manufacturers are.

the business model of a Claire's is containers full of cheap Chinese potmetal and glass purchased for pennies on the dollar and sold at outrageous markup to pay for ridiculous rents at shopping centers where materialists converge. Yeah, they got their ass handed to 'em by interest payments but the reason this is happening is the retail equation is changing. Chinese markup is increasing. Rents are increasing. And materialists are doing one of two things: (1) decreasing their spending (2) increasing their standards.

There's a lot of dead malls. there's about to be more. There's a lot of underemployed millennials. There's about to be more. That means there's about to be a lot of downward pressure on rents and a lot of upward pressure on entrepreneurialism.

I think if you survive to the other side you're going to be better off. And I think if you can't survive to the other side you'd best find shelter before the rush.