Our Dirty Little Secret - Janus Kane

People have asked me about my inspiration for 'The Little Insanity'. What was it that caused me to breathe life into six such confused characters? The simple answer is that I am a voyeur - a voyeur of life. I believe that the average reader will find the characters in 'The Little Insanity' to be all too recognizable. You may see yourself or your loved ones or perhaps just the out-of-luck guy on the corner, but you should see someone you know within these pages. There is a reason for that. Addictions are an inescapable aspect of the human condition, or maybe they are just a symptom.


Most of us, if we are being honest with ourselves, will have to plead guilty to some addiction or other. Not everyone suffers from the hardcore addictions that the characters in 'The Little Insanity' battle with and hopefully our addictions will not shorten our lifespan, but it bears mentioning that we all have them. Surely the girl with the heroin monkey on her back is at a much greater risk than the stay-at-home Mom who is addicted to buying things on the Home Shopping Network. The 300 pound food addict is much easier to pick out of a crowd than the rageaholic and the promiscuous sexual addict is more easily shunned than the parents who are addicted to living vicariously through their children's lives.


At the end of the day though, it really just comes down to a matter of degrees. That young mother may be no more able to resist the call of chocolate in her pantry than the crack addict is able to resist the dealer on the corner. The businessman who is addicted to his work may be no more able to stay out of the office than the alcoholic is able to stay out of the local bar. Once you scratch the surface, how many of us can truly deny any and all driving forces in our lives, destructive or otherwise?


Is that because we are all weak? Perhaps - we are human beings who face all manner of temptations every day. The fact that one person finds it easier to resist a chocolate bar than a baccarat table or a bottle of Jim Beam does not make them better or worse. It is just another bit of evidence supporting the fact that we are all more alike than we would care to admit.
What binds us together most closely is that we are all caught up in the eternal search for meaning in our lives. None of us are sure of where to find that meaning. Some look for it in religion, others in work and still others in the bed of numerous sexual partners. Some of us find temporary relief in carbohydrates, drugs or alcohol. Unless we have given up and fallen into depression or worse, we are probably still searching for the elusive secret - the thing that will make us feel, the thing that will get us up in the morning with the conviction that 'yes, our lives actually do have meaning', something that will carry on even after we are gone.


Some might think that I have stretched the term addiction to the point of breaking...I'll address that in a future post.

Our Boat Has A Hole In It by Janus Kane

I am curious. How many of you out there actually believe that our economy will have any integrity at all when the dust settles? Will the American dollar have any value after this recession has finally leveled out? First the disclaimer - I am by no means an expert. My one undergraduate course in Economics did not go well. I think I recall a C+ for my efforts. But, I have been successfully managing my own finances for over 30 years and I believe I have developed a sense of what works and what doesn't. I had no love for 'the Bush administration'. I do like Barak Obama and what he stands for. I think he is the shot-in-the-arm that this country needs. I do realize that 'doing nothing', in light of this recession, was not an option.

Having said all of that, I have to add emphatically that I am not in favor of, nor do I understand the current bailout philosophy. This is not the first time we have helped to bail out an industry (several years back it was the Savings and Loan organizations) and it will probably not be the last. But, where is this money coming from and are we placing no restrictions on its use? A wise man once told me; 'if you are going to give money - give it with the understanding that you will, in all likelihood, never see it again'. The context here was loaning money to a family member. The banking industry is not a family member, unless we consider it the shiftless uncle that drops in only when he needs some cash, and this money was not a gift. At least I hope it wasn't.

But, I am not sure. In all of the congressional hearings, I don't remember any mention of interest rates or repayment terms. How odd that the American people would give money to financial institutions that survive on one thing alone - the interest that they charge us for the use of their money. So now, if I am understanding this correctly, we are giving money to the banks so they can loan it back to us at the going interest rate. ????

I suppose that the original logic was based on the trickle down theory - that these large amounts of money would eventually trickle down and benefit the general populace. Unfortunately, the only trickling seems to be happening within the hierarchy of these major corporations.
But, if we put that questionable plan aside, that still leaves the question of where this money is coming from. How is it that we have suddenly gotten access to over a Trillion dollars that we are free to loan/give to whomever we choose? Is there a little back room at the Treasury where we are printing this special EXTRA money? Is this money backed up by gold bullion? If so, where was it when our government was running a financial deficit of its own?

Again, I acknowledge that math is not my strong suit, but it still does not add up. We had a Trillion dollars sitting around collecting dust while we had elderly who were shivering in the cold, while kids were dying for lack of health insurance and while mothers had to send their children to bed, hungry. I ask again, where did this big influx of cash come from? And while these corporations happily pad their bonuses and use this money unscrupulously, what will it do to the American dollar.

Are we creating a world where our children will have to carry thousand dollar bills around like we carry twenties? Are we edging toward the fifty dollar cup of coffee or the twenty dollar tank of gas? I have to wonder, because that is the one thing I took away from my Economics 101 course - supply and demand. In this instance, have we increased the supply of greenbacks in circulation to the point where they will loose their value? I suppose only time will tell, but one thing seems pretty clear - we are not going to fix our current economic problems by throwing more money at them.

The Little Insanity Intro