Talk about yo-yo-ing when it comes to weight loss and gain. Two weeks ago everyone was obsessed beause Jessica Simpson was wearing a normal human female size 8 instead of size zero. Now, Lindsay Lohan is anorexic and everyone is aghast about that, or even more inane, surprised.

The kicker: The same Rachel Ray diet ad ran embedded in both media stories (I refuse to call them breaking news.) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,494285,00.html#1 Check out the diet ad. It’s really obscene in this Lohan story.

Lindsay Lohan, whom I pity deeply, is a classic example of the child star grown up phenomenon, which can be used as a barometer for how greedy and alienated our culture has become.

Lohan is 22 years old, facing what is already a difficult time in people’s lives, with absolutely no center of self, or normal developmental experience to draw from. Age 22 is usually when someone is just getting out of college, having to face the work world with implications in mind, being adult without getting much respect, and making a huge transition in terms of lifestyle. Imagine what it’s like to do that without any real-world underpinnings.

I have to say, for the sake of honesty, that my point of view here is quite vehement. Among many other comments, I hold Lohan’s parents responsible for something I consider akin to exploiting children in a criminal way. Led in part by hypocritical so called Hollywood liberals, we Americans are quite comfortable complaining about Asian kids being exploited as slave labor, those tiny fingers weaving the oriental rugs we pay so much for. But when it comes to the way we exploit our own kids? We’re having none of it.

The American child star is not so different. We’re simply blinded by glamour and don’t acknowledge it. Interesting tidbit about the origin of the word glamour. It wasn’t a compliment: Middle English, refering to witches: a spell, enchantment or magic used to deceive, to hide the truth.

And there is no one institutional – not the media, not Hollywood studios, not schools, not any of the usual blame suspects—responsible. It is the parents. Ourselves.

Child stars in this country are made into child stars by their parents. It is their parents who pull them out of school to live on a studio lot, spending days in trailers and living out scenes instead of lives before they’ve even hit puberty. Don’t get me started about this rebuttal: “Well, the kid wanted to. Dancing, singing, acting all the time – begging to go to auditions. I was being supportive of a calling.”

Guess what? My 7-year-old daughter wants to eat marshmallows for breakfast, pop tarts for lunch, and cake for dinner. She would if I let her. If I LET her.

Kids can’t make those decisions.

In England, the normal course of things is that a child star participates in movies, plays, and performances during summer vacation. During the school year, guess what they do? They go to school. What a concept. They spend their developmental years developing core skills, emotions, normal experiences from which to draw if they decide to continue pursuing acting. They are grounded, with a personal center. I’ll bet it not only makes them better adjusted people, but also better actors.

Here we rob these kids of that grounding, exploit them year-round to invite fame into the house and make a living for us. (I’ve seen parents sitting in trailers reading sports car brochures while their 11-year-old works on the set all day.) Have you ever been to an audition for kids in Los Angeles? Want to be scared? Go watch these kids tap dance as hard as they can, and then look into their eyes. Know what’s missing? The innocence. It is seriously like watching a live horror movie. I’ve heard 11-year-olds talk about their f-ing parents, and they can’t wait to get their hands on their own money, and how embarrassing it is that they live in a tear-down. (Definition of tear-down in Hollywood: A $3 million home in a neighborhood where most homes are $5 million.) If these kids murder their parents, I still blame the parents.

I teach college kids. They look all grown up, they’re smart as whips. Once in a while one will look me in the eye and I’m reminded that they’re part adult, yes, but also partly innocent.

Poor Lindsay Lohan has no innocence left. What chance at innocence did she have? She has no center, so she is literally eating away at herself in an effort to find some control. Ever watch those documentaries about chimps who are born, never held, and left alone? They start picking at themselves, injuring themselves, hurling themselves at the bars on the cage. And these are smart animals. You think that you can raise a child in a fake environment and not see repercussions?

From day one, Lohan has been forced to capitalize on rites of passage to make money and achieve fame. First she was the gorgeous, precocious kid who could do it all (since Shirley temple, there have been numerous examples of this.) Then, approximately five minutes post puberty, the sexy teen. The headlines read that she is no longer that little girl. Quick, get her a string bikini and start selling her as a sex symbol.

And now, here she is, 22. What the next unique branding plan for her? Hmm. There are tens of thousands of gorgeous, smart 20somethings vying for the spotlight. How is she special now?

How the hell is she supposed to even know? All of a sudden she doesn’t feel good enough. She has no developmental experiences to draw from, no sense of self . Acting, at its core (not unlike writing), is about drawing the emotions from personal experience and applying it to the character and the situation. But what if your first kiss wasn’t with a real boy you liked, but with another actor playing a boy your character liked? That’s a vapid well to draw from after a while.

Think of all the actors who were child stars but took time out to have a real life—disappeared off the scene to do something outrageous like go to college. Are they better adjusted? Brooke Shields comes to mind. The Calvin Klein girl who cooed at us during the ’70s, when she was only 13 and opted to buy her tight jeans instead of paying the rent. There was a lot of criticism back then that she was too sexy. A lot of criticism thrown at her stage mother. Even given all that, she went Princeton, had some real experiences, did not hit her 20s and fall apart.

But now, in our so called more evolved 21st century, if you’re not a sex symbol bad girl by teenhood some marketer screwed up somewhere. And parents? No one mentions the parents. Classic example of our natural lives being completely overshadowed by our techno world. More important to seem big on screen than a person in life.

I wonder if Lohan has any idea what she likes, what dreams she’d like to pursue, if she allows herself to think of pursuits that don’t have to do with fame and the approval of others. I hope she takes the time to ask what she wants, and if she has no idea, to go on a journey to find out, try some new things.

Who knows if you can make up for lost developmental phases. I hope so.

What scares me most about the child star phenomenon is its sociological impact. Lohan’s eating disorder will be mimicked. (The Rachel Ray diet ad is placed in the Lohan story by someone smart, don’t kid yourself.) With three months left before bathing suit season, secretly people think she looks better than getting “fat”,  and when it comes time for a bathing suit, Lohan will look great. And remember the definition of fat: We’re talking a voluptuous Jessica Simpson.

Both beautiful young women are made to feel alienated, judged, unloves and therefore self-loathing. And that’s a disease that spreads to all of us because like it or not, the famous are not simply role models, they’re archetypes in the making. The difference between a role model and an archetype?

A role model is someone whose behavior we actively admire, and therefore we try to imitate them. An archetype is a collective societal given, a standard, a weighty influence on our psyche for socially acceptable behavior.

Scariest is that Jessica Simpson and Lindsay Lohan are food for the archetype machine. Once the machine is built, once enough young stars are scrutinized by the weight police–and that certainly has happened–it becomes an almost irrevocable part of our culture. Removing an influence once it’s endemic is very difficult.

Look at the effort here to remove guns (I’m not choosing a side here, just making an observation)? The gun became an archetype for our free ability to defend ourselves, and once that definition stuck, guns were a given. People have cited England’s ability to keep guns out of their population. But that’s because they never had them to begin with. Guns were never an endemic part of their culture.

The archetypcial definition of beauty in our culture has become a thin, teenage-looking body. How do we get rid of that archetype? Any ideas?

It can be done! Archetypes have been removed historically. In the era of Henry VIII, fat was in because if you were fat, it meant you were wealthy enough to afford to eat as much as you want. Their equivalent of the $3 million tear-down. Humankind managed to move on then.

Maybe if we celebrated age a little bit more. How about that? Maybe then our country’s 10-30 year-old women won’t keep eating away at themselves, like a cultural cancer. What if we start selling 40 as the new sexy age archetype? We’re a country of salesmen, let’s sell a new product prototype that outsells the old archetype. If that happens, then the prototype can evolve into a new archetype. Yes, that’s one of the thematic comments in my novel, TWO WEEKS UNDER. So this is a plug. But not entirely gratuitous. I’m interested in making it work. That’s why I wrote the book.

Anyone with ideas out there?

Analyzing car manufacturers who can’t run their companies may be the barometer du jour of how much your bank account will continue to shrink. But if you want to know how bad it really is, look at what we’re eating and what’s in store for our waistlines. Let’s put it this way: Something is definitely expanding.

As we head into the holiday season, there are economic indications that we need more New Year’s resolutions for change than just swearing in Barack Obama.

Here’s a quick snapshot: Kraft Foods has been summoned to the Dow altar to replace the banished AIG, Campbell Soup is at a 52-week high, food stores are easily meeting profit expectations, and luxury chocolate sales soared 20% in October, all set to finish out the year stronger.

We have officially entered another era where the Comfort Foodie rules, and there are consequences—pounds and pounds of consequences.

While the Dow may have lost more than 40% of its body fat, we’re in danger of adding that much to ours. That’s the way it was in 1929, 1987, and post 9/11. Every major crisis in our modern history has made us raid the fridge, and it looks like this market crash is no different.

An American Psychological Association survey reports that during stressful times, most Americans overeat (http://www.apa.org/releases/women-stress1008.html). Nearly 50% of Americans overeat or eat unhealthy food to manage stress, while 20% drink alcohol and another 10% smoke. Smaller percentages shop or gamble.

The Comfort Foodies win. We like to eat. Makes sense, self-comfort comes from childhood, and we didn’t smoke and drink then. So move over Asian fusion and raspberry coulis, restaurants will be hauling out and dusting off the deep fryers again, just like they did in 1987.

The term comfort food first appeared in 1977, in The Washington Post Magazine, during the last round of terrorist attacks and gas lines, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The reference was to grits. But the term became famous, and kicked off a generation of chic diner food menus, in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash.

It’s a global recession, so naturally comfort food is on the rise across the globe. And no one tracks chocolate sales as lovingly as the British. The upscale English grocery store Selfridge’s reported a 20% increase in luxury chocolate from September to October. They’re even selling new, gourmet-packaged Credit Crunch Chocolate.

Chocolate has particular panache when things are bad. The stock market crash of 1929 was a chocolate windfall. The Great Depression was called the Hungry Thirties by thriving chocolatiers, when many of today’s big names were established, including Cadbury, Nestle, Hershey, and Marathon (now Snickers.) They profited while all other luxury spending plummeted.

The last American crisis, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, proved to have the same effect as the stock market crashes, according to an International Communications Research survey (http://www.icrsurvey.com/Study.aspx?f=AICR_0802.html). In November 2001, 10% of Americans had gained weight since 9/11, and 20%, roughly 56 million people, were eating more comfort foods. One year later, the same survey found 43% hadn’t lost any of the weight they gained stress-eating after 9/11.

There is no doubt that comfort food is a wonderful ritual if it’s a one-night stand. It’s like rereading an old favorite book, watching a movie you’ve seen a hundred times, or wearing a worn out sweatshirt two sizes too big, too disheveled to leave the house. Do it every once in a while. But that same feel-good sweatshirt becomes a sign of depression if it’s on for more than a weekend.

It’s Christmastime. The pig-out starting whistle has been blown. Holidays make it worse because everyone, not just the stress monkeys, becomes a Comfort Foodie.

So is there an answer? Of course! Enjoy it for now, deal with it in 2009. Times are hard enough without the guilt. If I want to eat one more bon bon, I don’t want to hear about it.
–Rivka
P.S. For those who are planners (already have purchased their decade-at-a-glance for 2009 and want to mark the date for the kabash on pigging out), here is:

7 STEP PLAN TO CHASE AWAY THE COMFORT FOODIE DEMON (it does work):

1. Erase All Judgment, You’ve Got Great Survival Instincts. Do not judge yourself for your eating habits. If you get on the snarf-guilt cycle, you’ll make yourself twice as stressed out, and the problem will get worse. Besides, it’s not fair. It’s not only perfectly reasonable that the stress is getting to you and changing your behavior, it shows you have good survival instincts. By any standard, it is a scary time, and your mind and body are looking for a way to find safety. The people who are wandering around right now feeling la-di-da are like the zebra in the herd about to be pounced by the lion. So, deep breath, and even if you can’t quite put the slice of cheesecake back in the cafeteria line yet, tell yourself: This makes sense. I’m a well-tuned animal, all my instincts are in great shape. (No small thing after living in the insular techno age for so long.)

2. Stop Stepping on the Scale. Once you’re in a snarf cycle, do not step on the scale again until you have a grip on it. A grip means three weeks of new habits, which we’ll get to. Just don’t. Stepping on that scale is the equivalent of going online and checking your mutual fund value every day right now if you have no intention of selling it. Put the scale at the back of the closet. If that doesn’t work, throw it out. It will induce the guilt and guilt is the number one killer of a new habit.

3. Invoke Sense of Humor. This step is probably the most important. When you’re at a deli paying for that pint of Ben and Jerry’s, make a joke to checkout counter clerk or someone in line about the economy. If shame steps in and you sit quietly embarrassed about your Ben and Jerry’s, you’ll trigger the guilt, and then it’s the slippery slope into feeling bad. Humor is a shame killer and that’s what you want. Secret eating is alienating. That’s not to say that you can’t enjoy shutting the world out and curling up with a good book and your treat, but just admit to someone you’re doing it, with a laugh. It’s connective, and in these times we need to know we’re connected, our feelings aren’t hopeless. Even when you get further down on this list and are trying to instill new habits, you may find yourself veering in to that 7-11 for junk food or cigarettes. So, you did. Sense of humor about it. Ultimately, it won’t make a difference, it won’t ruin everything. You’re aware now, and one day you won’t want to veer into the 7-11. That’s what your after, not beating yourself up for the times you do.

4. Start New Physical Hobby. If you belong to a gym, quit if you’re not going. Hey, it will save you money. You can always join again later. Whatever your routine is that you’re not doing, stop doing it officially. First effect: Guilt about not doing it is gone. Second effect: You leave the door open to something new. And that’s the next step. Choose a new physical activity. If you’ve never done yoga or pilates, start. If you’ve wanted to take a dance class, do it. Rollerblading, the neighborhood softball team, racquet ball, tennis, whatever moves you. Make time. Or if money is really tight and you can’t spend any money on exercise, then take up running, or hiking if you live in an area conducive to that. Remember, though, any money you spend on exercise is less than you’re spending on junk food, or too much booze, or Xanax, for that matter. (If I had actually been smart enough to create Normal, the anti-anxiety drug in my novel, I’d be saying “what Recession?” right now.)

A recession is the perfect time to start something new because it is a time of change. This happens to be a motto of business strategists for a reason. Small businesses tend to have great opportunity in a recession, many people go back to school for advanced degrees. Use this theory for your personal well being and you may find it leads other places.

But start today. Even if it simply means taking a one-mile walk. Any new physical habit raises body awareness, and induces abstract thinking time, during which ideas are born.

5. Drink More Water. You Pick the Amount. Start right after your first exercise today. Count how many containers you drink a day, but instead of trying to live up to the standard goal of 8 or 10, just increase the amount you drink. Everyone is different, so standard goals don’t always make sense, and can set you off feeling like you’re failing. New habits should be successful and tailored to you. Do drink two glasses of water in the morning, and a glass for every cup of coffee and glass of wine you drink.

6. Channel Your Anxiety and Obsession. When a very high-end massage therapist in Malibu convinced me to quit smoking in one hour—after decades of trying to quit—she said something so simple I couldn’t believe it. I guess that’s how I knew it was true: “Your need to smoke is just intense energy. Redirect it. Stop squashing it with smoke. Obsess about something else.”

I started yoga the next morning. That was 5 years ago and I haven’t had a cigarette since. Yoga, by the way, is an excellent way to release anxious energy, incite the imagination, and make you want healthy food. It just works. I started organizing things in my life that I would have never gotten to otherwise: Boxes of photos now in albums, a clean office and files, purging things from my closets. You can laugh at Feng Shui, but clear energy does wonders. Weeding out clutter is instant gratification, too, and takes focus. Very therapeutic. And you get something done, which never happens if you watch the stock market news all day long, or stay up online until your eyes are square, trying to figure out what shoe will drop—or be thrown!—next (sorry, no way I could resist that).

7. Do a 3-Month Yeast Cleanse Diet. The step-by-step instructions are right there on the right, last item listed under the Rivka Tadjer (You might have to scroll up. In any case it’s on the home page: rivkatadjer.com.) Under the apprenticeship of a nutritionist and Latin botanical aficionado, I cracked the code of my physical being after 42 years. The result is I lost 20 pounds I will never gain back, and I have a formidable immune system.

Every person is different, in terms of how much weight you’ll lose, but you will lose weight. Honestly, it may be the best way to channel your anxiety and obsession. It’s no mystery that people like to count calories, carbs, fat—it’s like raking a zen sand garden. Channel your worry into your health. You’ll feel better in two weeks, have a new project, and renewed energy to think of creative ways of thriving in this economy. This isn’t a pitch. The yeast cleanse plan is free. Everything you need can be found in any vitamin section of a health food store, and the rest is just a matter of ritual and changing some of the groceries you buy.

Good luck. Please write back about your experiences with it.

I actually had better things to do this morning than get all irritated by another article with the sentiment of being youth obsessed and why it’s okay. Today’s little gem, on Earthlink, is called “Youthfulness an American Obsession—at what cost?”

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20081207/493b5850_3ca6_15526200812071859415137

It doesn’t go near talking about at what cost. It only cares about whether injecting yourself with some sort of hormone is really bad for you or not. That is not a cost. I’m so annoyed that I will not stop myself from being catty and mentioning that the headline, with no punctuation or verb, gives you an indication of the caliber of what’s to come.

This article passes for what’s now considered a balanced news feature: It leads off with a guy who is 69 years old with the muscle-bound body of a 30 year old. He injects himself daily with growth hormones and talks about feeling energized and not at all wanting to look young, but to live longer and healthier. Yeah, right.

Then the article segues into 20 year olds talking about how they too will need plastic surgery, how you need to look young in the work place. It goes on and on. And of course there are medical experts citing various dangers.

You know what’s never mentioned? That the people who go to extremes to look young don’t care about anything at all but themselves. Nothing. They don’t want to live long to contribute to society, to do anything for mankind, no one even mentions wanting to be alive to watch grandchildren grow. They want to travel and feel confident and blah blah blah.

Every quote reads like: “Enough about me, let’s talk about ME.”

It might seem weird to mention Kentucky Fried Chicken yet again, but bear with me. This article reminds me of why we need more Colonel Sanders’. He spent an entire career in the military, and only when he retired did he start Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what did he do with the profits? Gave it to charity.

By the way, he lived a good long time, all without injections or needing to look like he was 20. And he didn’t seem to lack confidence because he had a belly.

Maybe if you lack confidence because of a little belly roll, you should stop naval gazing.

Whatever happened to the term “everything in moderation”?

Hey, everyone wants to live longer, be healthier. But if it’s all we think about we’re going to create a society of Paris Hiltons instead of Colonel Sanders. We’ll have a booming customized medicine industry and lots of pretty people walking around talking about how confident they are. No wonder we’ll all have to move to China to get jobs. Or never mind that, we’ll just be the United States of China.

The KFC submission came with the cutest preamble, too, which was an apologetic explanation that normally she is an organic-only sort of person. You know, a person with a Belief System. But my favorite part is the breathless quality of the confession.

As a fried chicken snarfer myself, I relate. Though I haven’t done KFC in a while. Last time I went it wasn’t an acronym, that’s how long it’s been. I live in a small, nosy, organic town, where people turn up their noses if a café dares to have coffee but no chai tea. Someone might see my car at KFC, so I do the grocery store fried chicken. Actually, I never admit I’m getting the chicken until it’s in the cart. Next time I think I’ll just give over to it, add a little premeditation, and drive right through. If I’m going down, I might as well be nice to myself about it. I wonder if the secret KFC eater drives through or sits in KFC. I’d definitely eat in the car.

Okay, now that I’m completely jonesing for fried chicken at 6 a.m….Here’s the roundup of foods people start eating and overeating under big stress. They range from funny to touching. The comfort is so particular that there aren’t many repeats. That may be the best part; how idiosyncratic our habits are, how original we were as children when we fostered the relationship with food and rituals.

“Peanut butter on a spoon. I’ve enjoyed this comfort food since earliest childhood — a dollop of peanut butter presented to me on a kitchen spoon, which I would lick like a lollipop as I sat in the sunshine streaming through the bay window in the farmhouse kitchen. Late at night, nearly half a century later, when I open the pantry door in search of something, anything, I behold the jar of Skippy’s and succumb. And there are times, yes, when I rebelliously double-dip with the same spoon I licked — OMIGOD! — but it’s true. And as I enjoy my spoonful of peanut butter, I’m sitting in the sunshine once again, and all those struggles and problems, just for the moment, are somebody else’s.”—Bob Sheasley (author of HOME TO ROOST. Yes, it’s about chickens, our relationship to them, and there isn’t a life metaphor left out.)

“Homemade popcorn (made with oil) eaten from a brown lunch bag, with Lawry’s season salt on it and with semi sweet chocolate chips sprinkled in after it cools a little so it’s not a gooey mess. And for the benefit of my waistline, I neither watch the Dow, nor open my awfully thin monthly financial statements for the time being. Denial is my favorite flaw.”— Nicole N. Auerbach

“Potato chips.  Non-stop until the bag is empty and my hands and forearms arms are greasy and salty.”—Laurie Osmond

“0mg I love food, especially late at night. My faves are Ice cream (Ben and Jerry’s), Oreos, kettle corn, yogurt drizzled pretzels.”—Stephanie Sanchez

“Caramel calcium chews. My version of a prescription medication addiction.”—Hannah Kinnersley

“Ben and Jerry’s phish food, pistachio nuts, dried Ranier cherries.”— Dr. Gil Block

“Frosted Flakes, straight from the box…no bowl, no milk.”— Mary Davis

“Grilled cheese. Have not eaten it since childhood, yet I cannot seem to go a day without the Kraft whitebread and butter melted just so. Several weeks of it now, 4-5 times a week.” —Stephanne Pleshette

“Food?  Damn, I’ve been going directly to a bottle of wine, but stopped that a week or so ago, because I was so afraid that McCain would win and I’d drink myself to death.” —Martha Frankel (author of HATS AND EYEGLASSES, hilarious and touching memoir of her loving Jewish family’s gambling addiction. Reading it is like having Martha tell you the story in person.)

“Mac and Cheese for some reason it just always works. That and popcorn. Maybe it’s the mindless chewing with cheesy goodness, just can’t go wrong.” Dan Nicole Romer

“Target choco espresso truffle chocolate bar.  One square at a time.  $2.00 each bar.”—Elaine Teresa Kleinberg

“I know it sounds pollyanna, but honey is mine.  I gob it into tea with milk.  I eat raw honey straight from the jar.  I eat it on toast.  I gob it into tea.  It’s too much.”—Janet Baus

“My favorite pick me up is chocolate chips. A handful or two is very satisfying and not toooo terrible calorie-wise.”—Jane Applegate

“Any Alcohol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.”—Elaine Serrur

“When I’m off, I really like to be bad and good.So I’ll eat high fat stuff, cheese and nuts…when I am getting my period this near total vegetarian eats dried sausage and apple cider vinegar(don’t ask) and licorice! Then I will compensate with a week of blended salads, raw food, fruit and steamed vegetables. I only do this when it gets dark for that first few weeks after Daylight Savings Time ends…..it’s an animal thing.”—Marianne Macy (Keep your eye out for this name. Macy is an author and editor extraordinaire, as well as alternative energy activist/researcher. She was TWO WEEKS UNDER’s first editor and I bow in her general direction.)

“Toast, white rice with butter and tamari, pasta and pizza. Bread and butter and dark chocolate.”—Anonymous teacher and her senior seminar students.

“Guinness.”—Kevin Hogan

“I’m in Israel now so I have to say that I’m eating a ton of clementines and they are sooooo good.  Also drinking lots of freshly squeezed pomegrande, sometime mixed with guava juice - heaven.  And of course, burekas and all sort of yummy baked and tasty goods, filled with poppy or other wonderful things. And salads. And pita…”—Meira Blaustein

“My secret eating is never a reaction, but a positive reaffirmation of free will or a supreme act of defiance. As one who constantly has to watch his weight and health, I am always acutely aware of such things as carbs, fat or whether I am getting my daily exercise. So, for me, the ultimate food act of defiance is beginning the day by NOT exercising. Instead, I go to the coffee shop, order corned beef hash with eggs (home fries included) with a toasted white flour bagel (plenty of butter) and caffeinated coffee. That and the New York Post (as opposed to the Times or News) goes ahead and makes my day.”—Seth Moskowitz

“Milk and cookies. Specifically, whole milk and graham crackers, ever since my tonsillectomy at age 5, or even earlier (when I ate them as “cereal”).—Phillip Levine

“Chocolate, yes I think it’s been dark chocolate these past few months. But that Tuesday night [election night] at the ACME restaurant in Manhattan….Peter had just voted and we were taking a minute to check in on the latest TV results (Acme has about half a dozen TVs). Peter and I glanced up only to see that the really early electoral college results were Obama 3 McCain 8. I promptly ordered a plate of french fries and sunk deeply into a ‘Major’ funk. So when push comes to shove and I’m really desperate, I need salt.”—Julie Hedrick (An artist worth dreaming with. Check out juliehedrick.com)

“I live on a college campus. My diet is defined by the whims of an angry ogre who lives in the cafeteria, so i do not have choice. I have only discretion. So now it’s only the quantity that changes …. Yes, and its mirroring the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s peaks and valleys.”—Valerie

“Our family suggests buying lots of Krause’s Chocolates whether you’re celebrating or comforting yourselves!”—Lisa Krause

“My drug of choice is coffee. Boring, I know. But it’s fat free.”—Wayne Rash

“It’s not exactly a snack food, but I’ve been downing No-Doz since this mess started. Getting up at 3:30-4 a.m. to read political news. Since I heard that Sarah Palin was safely back in Alaska, I slept in ’til 5 this morning.”—Kathy Yakal

“Brussels sprouts once a day with pear juice if I could. If I could eat sugar, I would like cookies dipped in milk. And iced coffee and/or a hot chocolate.”—Brenda Crews

“My comfort foods include a little shameless self promotion (only good stuff) and some really dirty, nasty bad stuff: GOOD STUFF: Organic Nectars Raw Agave Gelato — oh yeah — rich and creamy ‘indulgenceness’ without the dairy, sugar, or any of the bad stuff. Oh, and did you know that this won the 2008 GOLD award for Outstanding Diet or Lifestyle Product at the Fancy Food Show? Organic Nectars Chocagave Raw Cacao — thick and gooey ‘chocolateness’ without the dairy, sugar, etc. This one took home the SILVER award for Outstanding Dessert Topping at the 2008 Fancy Food Show. BAD STUFF: Kettle lightly salted potato chips. When the time is right I can polish off a bag of these salty, crunchy babies without blinking or looking down once. Hershey’s Gold Almond chocolate bar. Hershey’s sent me a case of these bars a few months ago and I dive into them like a giant swimming pool on hot sweaty summer day when I need a sweet fix. McDonald’s cheeseburger-n-fries. The cheapest, baddest hunger killer around. For $2 I get that insane, highly processed, it-isn’t-real-food-flavor-but-tastes-so-good-feeling that reminds me of my microwave, processed-food riddled Jersey shore childhood — all without ever having to leave my car. There, you now have all my secrets.”—Lisa Protter

What is this idea doing on this blog? How about this: Every comment I make—from the craziness of our worship of fame, to our self loathing and alienation—comes from one root: the sociological implications of the technological age, and how it’s changing our behavior. That’s why my novel is about a two-week vanity coma you go under to lose weight. That’s why I obsess about our growing alienation, need for a personal brand name, and inane collective belief that every human being should look like they’re 20. These are some of the darker implications. But there are other, bright implications.

Bill Gates is the technological revolution, or at least an exemplary personification. So bear with me, this is actually not a satiric idea. It’s genuine.

First, let me make this clear: I think Bill Gates is a credit to our generation. He may behave poorly, kinda thuggish, and definitely needs a little people skills development, but he is the only one of our generation to deal himself in at the table of the power infrastructure in this country, and globally. I mean the ability to pull up a chair and tell the likes of J.P Morgan to scootch over and make room (figuratively, of course, the original J.P. Morgan is dead, as is his son).

This is not an easy feat. This table is filled with the guys who funded the industrial revolution, as well as World War II (in J.P. Morgan’s case, that included funding the Nazis before it became out of vogue, when the entity switched to backing the Allies), and of course the technological revolution. To get in on this in just one more generation should be applauded, no matter how bratty. It is life affirming to know that someone can still move mountains, and break a previously impenetrable barrier. (And come on, after this election, we are reminded that it is possible. Now let’s make it the norm.)

Bill Gates started out wanting to do one thing: make it possible for people to have access to their congressman—to write them a note. Email. He grew up in a generation where he was more worried about government oppression (Vietnam) than corporate greed and corruption. Same difference if you ask me, and always has been, but that’s fodder for another day.

And as far as him stealing code from IBM (I have to get all the crap out of the way before my Ambassador pitch): Did Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarize “I have a dream” because the words “I” “have” “a” and “dream” already existed? It is the recipe you create with words that makes you a writer. You don’t invent the words. Same is true for software developers: It’s not that the code isn’t out there. It’s the recipe of code you create that makes the software. Intellectual property for software is shaping up to be the courtroom battle of the next 10 years, with new precedents being set. What’s the core issue? When a software developer is hired by someone, how much of their brain and research belongs to the company, particularly when they leave to go to another job? While at their jobs, they’re flying around the Internet, grabbing tiny pieces of code from Google, and stirring it into a creation flavored by their point of view. All of the tens of thousands of people now laid off in the tech sector; if they go somewhere new and their intelligence, insight, and, yes, experience, helps them to develop some great new product, does Hewlett Packard and their ilk have the right to lay claim?

Don’t forget: Bill Gates offered a deal to IBM and IBM said no. This is a guy to rally behind. He forced the computer makers of the world, well within the boundaries of free enterprise, to load his software before they sell their boxes. These PC sellers ain’t nice people necessarily, either, you’ll remember. Someone who can do this can figure out China.

Okay, fast forward: I contend that today Bill Gates is still the underdog, the upstart, the one to root for, when you take a look from a global perspective and include the Halliburtons and family dynasties out there. And I love geeks, so I say it with affection for the whole bunch. The love interest in my novel. Greg Thomas? He’s the dream geek; the leading man of the digerati. The publisher I chose is a native Northern Californian Silicon Valley geek who is all about the “we roll our own” mantra. He’s been preaching to me about the Open Source guys getting ripped off for decades now. And that’s the thug part of Bill Gates, I don’t deny it. (He’s not a fan of Bill Gates, for the record, which is why I’m not telling him about this blog entry. I’ll wait until he notices it on his own. He can have his little Bill Gates fit then.)

Here’s what we get if Bill Gates is ambassador to China (and in my fantasy world, with Al Gore as the CTO):

The minute Bill Gates is involved at an ambassador level, we’ll start to see him invest even more money in China. American ownership in Chinese ventures is a good thing, especially as countries like Russia and soon many others start borrowing from them. We’ll start to see Bill Gates have ideas other than his petty worry about Chinese piracy of his precious software.

He’ll start to get ideas about moving out of the software business and into the hardware business, where he belongs. The man has the world’s resources at his fingertips, and he’s developing software. It’s ridiculous. Software is poor people (relatively speaking of course). Why do they develop software in Israel and India? Because they couldn’t afford to be in the hardware business. But Bill Gates? He could single handedly bring potable water to the world. How about high tech desalination plants? How about a wireless network of pods, floating out at sea, harnessing wind energy? How about real fuel cell cars in China, to replace the lawn mowers they now drive now, which are creating one of the worst pollution problems in the world? Forget Internet browsers, they’re way beneath his capability.

Move over GM and Chrysler if Gates starts a car company. (GM and Chrysler, by the way. There’s a braintrust of a deal, huh? Merging two terrible companies into one huge terrible company. Gates would never make such a decision).

China is the new axis of business. We want in, we want a new flourishing economy, we want peace and freedom. They’ll love him. They already do. He’s invested huge amounts of money in telecommunications there. And I don’t care what anyone says about Bill Gates, he would fight for humanitarian policies all over China and get it done. Bring the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation there, with a China Chapter.

An ambassador with his level of tech capability, dealing in Chinese business and human affairs, will bring the global tech sector roaring back to life with our interests protected and millions of jobs created. And he could work so well with any CTO. It will give rise to the most important new economy and new global infrastructure: Green tech.

And therein lies the sociological implication of our tech era: The CEO of our generation in tech will drive the political re-landscaping of the next generation.

–Rivka

Okay, now that we’ve elected an historic president, and we see hope again, and one huge stress item has been checked off the list, I can ask people to fess up:

How much more have you been eating since the stock market took a nose dive in the beginning of October and you watched your savings vanish, or your home go on the chopping block, or you lost your job, or you’re worried that you will lose your job, or you don’t know if you can afford college next semester, or…or…or?

Stress Eating makes us feel like crap in short order – a delicious bite with a fast aftertaste. So let’s at least enjoy the human condition aspect of it: We all do it, and it’s wild to see what food we run to because stress eating doesn’t mean you’re eating more salad. We run for the comfort foods—at least if we can feel like a kid, and I think that’s part of it, we won’t worry about the stock market. My 7 year old doesn’t let a plunging Dow affect the way she organizes and categories her Starbust before she eats them, saving her favorite lemon ones for last. Watching her, it is my desire to escape to that place of oblivion, where how many lemons come are in the pack and how long I can make them last takes front and center of my thoughts. She’s like a zen master.

Brownies. For me, a good brownie is a world unto itself (no nuts, I can’t deal with nuts in any dessert item, though alone I can snarf curried cashews by the pound) I have eaten more brownies in the last month than in the previous two years.

French fries. I can hear seagulls call and smell the sea, feel the beach breeze blowing my hair with every dunk into the ketchup. For the five minutes it takes me to snarf them, I don’t think about the fact that I won’t be able to afford that beach house rental this year. I have said no to the side order of fries at lunchtime without a second thought for years. Now I order them.

I actually pulled into a Dunkin’ Donuts last week. I don’t even like donuts that much once I start in on one. Four days I go I never wanted one more in life. When I was done with the classic jelly donut, all I could think was that I should have gone to the bakery nearby that has my favorite brownies instead. Talk about a stress monkey.

Peppermint stick ice cream. This is what I have been shoveling in while I watch Bloomberg TV (which I’ve been watching around the clock, something I haven’t done since post-9/11. As a financial journalist by training, I do believe that if you follow the money trail you will understand everything going on, behind the scenes, and in front. I analyze politics by watching Bloomberg. As a kid, Howard Johnson’s peppermint stick ice cream was my favorite, including the ritual of going to the restaurant and eating it out of those silvery ice cream dishes with the long thin spoon.

Oh, the massive amounts of red wine. Not a childhood memory, I assure you, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it. Not a la carte, of course; accompanying really good cheese and crackers.

Fried chicken. I love fried chicken as a rule, but there’s been a lot of it. Fried chicken and fries for dinner, then the extra piece or two with email time at night.

Wow, this is a longer list than I thought. French bread. Long sandwiches with French bread. I love that you can size your sandwich instantly with a loaf of French bread. That’s the other thing: roast beef sandwiches on French bread, mayo on one side mustard on the other. This was my favorite food as a teenager, half the time with brie instead of the mayo.

I’m sure there’s more that I’m simply blocking out. Oh yeah, there was the apple pie incident in bed. The pie, my daughter and myself propped up in my bed, two spoons, each with a good book. She’s been telling me this is a great thing to do since she could talk. Like I don’t know that.

Normally, I don’t eat at night except for carrots or some other very restrained sort of thing. There are exceptions, but not a lot. And I haven’t eaten past full on sugar in bed right before falling asleep on your average workday for a while.

What has crept into your diet and habits since the stress struck? Come on, it’s fun. I’ll make a chart of the Top 10 foods people run to. Maybe we’ll all get recession proof stock tips out of it. Kraft replaced AIG on the Dow. Hmm. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I’ve single-handedly added to their bottom line.

First of all, it’s important to note that the morph wouldn’t work the other way around—if Andy Rooney were Buddha. It makes a difference what qualifies what somehow. His name is Steven and he is a brilliant nutritionist, medical intuitive, and apothecary-ist. Do you say that, like you’d say pharmacist?

I’m about to tell you a failsafe way to shed 20 pounds (no vanity coma, I promise). Here’s why my guru is credible: I’m 43 years old in three weeks, I weigh 117 pounds, I’m 5′5″ and I eat whatever I want, drink red wine in considerable amounts, and am not a gym slave.

But it gets better than that: I have a seven year old daughter, so she comes home from school with all sorts of virii and bacterial infections. I rarely catch what she has, and if I do get sick, it’s not for more than 24 hours, no matter what it is.

This was not the case in August of 2007. In August of 2007, I weighed 137, felt bloated all the time, had eye strain headaches, a shorter temper, I kept getting lower backaches, neck pain, and whatever was going around the school hit me hard. Now, 137 is not a lot of weight generally speaking. But for my frame and body type it wasn’t meant to be and it zapped my energy. It also kept my eye color from being what it should be. I know that sounds ridiculous. Here’s how I know all this:

I woke up one morning and saw blood in my stool. I completely freaked out, called Steven, whom I’ve known for a while. He’s better than calling any doctor I’ve ever had. And I’m not against doctors or modern medicine. Don’t get me wrong. I need to know there are hefty pharmaceuticals should anything go really wrong. I had already made an appointment with an M.D. I like to compare what they say to what Steven says (not always at odds, but Steven is always right, and I find it interesting to see when the M.D.s are wrong – usually when something is subclinical and they have no knowledge or toolset to figure it out. Steven is trained in Chinese methods, among other things, so he doesn’t get stumped).

Steven said: “You have digestive yeast. Yuck, a lot of it. [You need to realize that he said this over the phone.] I’ve told you that before. I’ve asked you if you were hitting the sugar.”

“But the doctors say it could be an intestinal disease or something.”

“They’re wrong.”

And then he gave me the following prescription, which is a must-do plan for any adult, whether or not you have alarming symptoms. What I love about Steven is he just shares what he knows because he can. He doesn’t exploit people and charge a fortune for his diet, like everyone else. And he could. Any adult should do this diet, which is a complete yeast cleanse. Especially people who struggle with bloat, sluggishness, or extra weight; they all have yeast issues in their digestive tract. We eat too much sugar, and not just dessert sugar. Sugar in everything. What was great about my alarming symptoms, which went away as soon as I started Steven’s program and which have never come back, is that blood in the wrong place is so terrifying you stick to the remedy. I’d never stuck to a diet in my life.

STEVEN’s 3-MONTH DIET PLAN

First of all, it will take three months. It will work. Don’t cheat it though. It’s worth it. I have weighed between 115 and 118, fluctuating only during my period, for an entire year, with zero effort after three months.

First two weeks eat no sugar at all. None. Not even carrots or apples. No carbs —no pasta, no breads, no grains, not even whole ones. No fruit. Learn what sugar is and don’t eat it. Sugar is the food for digestive yeast. You must starve the yeast, kill it off completely and reset your digestive system to grow a varietal of thriving flora. If you do that, you will stay thin forever, and curb some of your aging signs. (Obese people tend to have only a couple varietals of flora, so everything sits in there, stagnant, bad bacteria growing like weeds. That’s where bloat comes from. Thin people tend to have more varietals of flora and their systems whip everything out – even sugar. That old saying about just being born with this or that metabolism. All nonsense. )

What you can eat: meats, tofu, eggs, lots and lots of greens. Nuts if you’re not allergic. Dairy if you’re not allergic. You will get bored. You will feel like you’re eating the same foods over and over again. Once you learn how to snack differently, though, it’ll be okay. You may drink coffee (that was lucky for me, because I would not have been able to stop, blood or no blood.)

Along with the diet, take the following, all of which you get at a health food store. This is the cool secret. Steven has so many of them. And what I love about him is that he just tells you because he knows and shares. Google diets on the Internet and look at all the people exploiting this need and charging money for dieting information, most of which is garbage.

HERBS AND SUPLLEMENTS—DON’T LEAVE THESE OUT OR THE PLAN WON’T WORK:

FIRST 2 WEEKS:

First thing in the morning, one a completely empty stomach, at least 20 minutes before food or coffee: One really good probiotic . And not just plain acidophilus. You want a mix, and you want the sort they keep refrigerated if you buy it at the store. The stuff on the shelf is largely dead and it’s living bacteria that you’re supposed to be taking. And it’s not enough to just eat yogurt. You’d have to eat gallons a day and only plain. Any sugar in yogurt – the fruit on the bottom—completely counteracts the effect of the probiotics in the yogurt. Good bacteria is the flora varietals I was mentioning. You want to populate your digestive system with good bacteria. I still take one of these every morning and will forever; and I give it to my daughter, too, who is 7 so of course eats a lot of sugar. You’ll be wasting money to get the shelved stuff, unless it’s earth based. That gets complicated (fodder for another nutritional blog post, which I will do), but I take an earth-based probiotic, called Body Biotics, which I order from a Houston company called Life Science Products (lifescienceproducts.com). I am not recommending them over any other earth-based probiotic; I just don’t know of any others.

With food in the morning: 2 capsules of Pau D’Arco. This is a tree bark — an anti fungal whose job it is to help kill off the yeast. If you take it without food, it will just go into your blood stream and not target and clean the area you want, which is your digestive tract. Any herbs you take that have a job to do, send directly to the area they need to work. Even if you just eat lettuce with the capsules, it will send the Pau D’Arco through your digestion.

Space any supplements you take 20 minutes apart. After food, take one capsule of zinc citrate. Do not take any other form of zinc. If they don’t have it in the health food store, ask them to order it. Or go somewhere else. Zinc citrate will help curb the production of yeast. Here’s a neat test with zinc: If it makes you feel sick to take zinc on an empty stomach, it’s because you still have a lot of yeast in your digestive system. It used to make me nauseous. Now I can take it on an empty stomach just fine, because I have no more yeast.

Take 2 more capsules of the Pau D’Arco midday with food – always with food.

Take 2 more capsules of the Pay D’Arco in the evening.

Three times a day for the Pau D’Arco.

Don’t eat after 8 p.m. if you go to bed at 11 or so, but if you have to, eat celery or leafy greens.

Summary of daily supplements for first two weeks:

I probiotic

I zinc citrate

2 capsules of Pau D’Arco three times a day.

FOR THE REST OF THE 3 MONTHS:

Add Cat’s Claw Bark capsules to the mix. Another bark, this is another antifungal as well. Take 2 capsules in the morning, with your Pau D’Arco, with food. Take 2 capsules in the evening, with your Pau D’Arco, with food. So yes, you’re taking four capsules at a time –2 Pau D’Arco and 2 Cat’s Claw Bark—morning and night. At midday, only take the Pau D’Arco.

If you don’t keep to the regimen of the supplements the diet won’t work. I’ve passed this diet onto friends. The ones who do the supplements are successful, the ones who get tired of them, get out of the habit after a few weeks, call or email and say: Hey, this isn’t working as well anymore.

FOODWISE AFTER THE FIRST TWO WEEKS:

As Steven would say: Eat like a caveman. (I have to keep giving Steven credit for this diet because he cracked the code of my body, not me, and I wouldn’t have in a million years, even though I know a lot about nutrition.)

First of all, eat breakfast, preferably before coffee (personally I’m incapable of this, but it’s supposed to be great for your metabolism, so try). And eat protein for breakfast. You will if you’re on this diet, because that’s one of your two food groups. If you eat fat, eat it with a bowl of leafy greens. No cholesterol worries if you do this. Steak, eggs, and a salad is a perfect breakfast. Small portion of steak (4 oz). I eat eggs and salad for breakfast all the time. Just add salad at every meal. Eat everything as a salad. I grew up with Mediterranean parents, so this wasn’t even weird to me. You get used to it, then you’ll crave it.

Add some fruit. Some fruit is good. Except for blackberries. Steven claims more than 90 % of people are allergic to blackberries. I have no basis for proving that, except that I believe him.

Watch the carbs. Have some, but not a lot. Not every day. Do this: if you eat the Italian hoagie one day, don’t eat carbs the next. I have to say I ate no pasta, French fries, or pizza for three months. I have a 7 year old. It was hard. I did eat sandwiches, but once you’re in the habit of eating everything with salad, you start to be very aware of all carbs, and cut them down. Remember, you don’t want to feed yeast while it’s still in your body.

I drank red wine the whole time. I made sure the next day after drinking red wine that I didn’t eat carbs or sugar, so the fermentation, set up to become yeast, didn’t get fed. Steven would not recommend lots of wine consumption on this diet. This is the Rivka what-the-hell-is-the-point-if-I-can’t-drink-a-glass-of-wine variation. I’m no worse for wear. I did not drink white wine, which has inherent sugar.

I cheated once in a while, too. If I were out on the town, I’d eat dessert. But not more than once a week. And not within the first two weeks.

One great addition to this diet, in my personal opinion (not Steven’s recommendation): Yoga. Once a week, even. It helps.

THESE WERE THE THREE WILDEST THINGS:

1. The weight came off so fast it was alarming. That’s how I knew it wasn’t meant to be on their in the first place. First two weeks, 8 pounds gone. Every few days after that another pound, just kept shedding it. I started the diet on Aug. 4, 2007, by mid October I was 20 pounds lighter. Not even three months. The quick weight loss in the beginning is why some people stop the supplements, though. They figure the job is done. But it’s not. I couldn’t believe I lost 8 pounds, had no intention or idea that so much more would come off. I didn’t do this to lose weight. It was not meant to be on my body. And that’s why you need to go through the entire three months. To see what is meant to be on your body. I weigh what I weighed as a teenager.
2. Here’s one disgusting thing that happens, so don’t be alarmed: About a month into it, my breath started smelling AWFUL. I mean, awful. I could brush my teeth and eat mints all day, and I could barely curb it. Steven laughed, and said it was good, my flora was changing. Bad breath is always about what’s in your gullet, not a clean mouth. It lasted about a month, maybe a little more. It was scary, I was starting to think it would never go away. Then it did. It’s like all the rotting fungus in there lifted out of packed in, entrenched places, and flushed out. Once the bad breath was gone, so was the yeast.
3. Three: my eye color changed. I’m not kidding. I used to have brown eyes with a little green in them – hazel. But now people tell me my eyes are mostly green, with a brown ring around the green, and even a little blue. Not kidding. It’s wild. I can see it myself. The first person who told me this, a girlfriend who has known me for a long time, said while we were having lunch: “Wow, I never noticed you had blue in your eyes.” I thought it was light in the café, or the shirt was I wearing. But then a few days later, someone else said it. Then someone else.

That’s it. After 3 months, I resumed normalcy, though my habits have changed. If I eat a lot of sugar one day, I don’t do any sugar or carbs the next day. I’ll tell you why: I notice how tired sugar makes me. I feel sluggish and almost hung over the day after a lot of sugar. But if I have a day without it, I bounce back. For those who have extreme weight issues, two things can apply:

1. It may take more than three months for this to work. Use your breath as a gauge.
2. A maintenance diet can be to alternate carb/no carb days: Eat carbs one day, not the next. Keep sugar intake low. Ideally, Steven recommends to have something sugary and desserty once a week. Really go for it once a week. But do allow it, and the carbs, at some point, or you’ll binge.

I have recommended this diet to friends and watched it work on women, men, people of different body types and constitutions. You’ll look younger too. I keep recommending it because people ask me what I did. They ask because I’m think, I have no headaches, neck aches, backaches, and I don’t get sick.

Like I said, I do still take the probiotic daily, zinc citrate once a week or so, and if I’m on vacation, or travelling and I’m eating more sugar than normal, a lot of carbs, I take Pau D’Arco periodically. But that’s it. (I take other select vitamins, like B complex daily, but no other diet maintenance supplement). Pau D’Arco comes in tea form, too, which is great to drink once in a while.

–Rivka

I woke up in the middle of the night with this thought: Buy IBM. It’s high yield, they don’t need to borrow money to operate, and it’s so cheap right now.

And if I’m thinking that, so are others, which brings us to this: There are two things, and two things only, that move the stock market: fear and greed. I’m fascinated by the fear-greed relationship because it’s also one of the polarities that moves us emotionally, so it makes sense that we’ve created a powerful memetic (social organism) infrastructure that brings it to collective life.

We want so badly to move from fear to greed, yet we can’t scrub the fear off of us sometimes, no matter how hard we try, and regardless whether there’s actual reason to let go of the fear. When fear grips us, it can feeds off itself, at which point it gets out of control, until we’re drowning in it. And then something kicks in where we get sick of it. Often, the move from fear to greed and back again, as exhibited by the stock market (historically, as well as what’s coming), has no real rational catalyst.

I’m editing my next novel, LIES I WISH MY FATHER TOLD ME, which is all about fear and what it does to us. (TWO WEEKS UNDER is about shame.) So the idea that the switch from fear to greed happens without the fear necessarily being assuaged, is on my mind. Same goes for having more fear than is necessary.

Our ability to get sick of fear is a great thing. I was at my local grocery market on Friday, after the stock market closed. A horrible, stressful week, people tense every day. But then something peeked out. Liveliness, courage, the need to feel good again. The butcher and a woman in line were whispering about which stocks they liked.

There are two stock market terms I love: lagging and leading indicators. Lagging are the things that have already happened, or already taken into consideration because they will definitely happen (jobless rates going up, mortgage foreclosures). Lagging indicators are theoretically already priced into the market. Leading indicators are things that haven’t happened yet and haven’t been taken into consideration by the market yet.

We fear both. Our lives have lagging and leading indicators, too. The unyielding fear of the lagging ones is what causes free-floating anxiety and panic, I think, because there is every reason to stop being afraid of what you already know, if you face it. But if you don’t, it follows you everywhere. And if you don’t get a grip on your lagging indicators, you can’t feel hopeful and happy about your leading ones.

I hereby declare my ex-husband a lagging indicator! Actually, I have a list: my mother dying of cancer, falling and breaking my ankle running in Riverside Park, my father dropping dead when he was 54, being bitten by a German Shepherd when I was 8, and the money I lost last week in the market.

Okay, so my list is a lot longer than that. Kinda fun to write it down. Share your lists if you like.

The real question is, aside from lots of talk, do I have the guts to buy IBM?