fund$

Fund$

by Bob on September 4, 2007

I was, as usual, riding on a train from downtown Boston to the South Shore. I am always fascinated by what I see in the train in rush hour or thereabouts. What books people are reading, what facial expressions are they imposing, what they are listening to, what snippets of conversation I hear. All of this, in a Jungian Synchronistic sense, I consider meaningful.

T-shirts are interesting. Especially when they have something written on them. Not a school t-shirt which has "Harvard" or "MIT" on it. That's nice but not unusual. It's when people "talk" with their t-shirts, things they want to broadcast but wouldn't necessarily say out loud. It's part of our modern age. Speaking not in tongues but through t-shirt lettering.

Well, a girl got on and her t-shirt had written across it, in a rather indelicate place, "GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUND$".

So, I thought it was clever and a pun on the brilliant song by the brilliant Cyndi Lauper which was so 1980s, "Girls Just Want to have Fun".

In this case it was not fun, obviously, but "funds". So she wants money. Well it's cute but it has a lot of societal significance.

It's all about money these days. Not feeling, not really love anymore, but money. Blinging. $300 sneakers which actually cost a couple of dollars to make in a poorer country. Wall Street fortune dreams.

But it's not extraordinary to think that a girl would want a boyfriend who spends money on her, although not necessarily politically correct 100%.

But it's a sign of our times. Not "fun" but "fund$".

Maybe a result of all those corporate LBOs (Leveraged Buy Outs) and hedge funding. Or just what we see in the media. Glitz. Sparkling life ornaments and style fashions.

Someone is making a lot of really big money by pushing this idea of Fund$.

I guess we can rule out a world barter economy. That was a 1960s idea which never quite made it into the 21st century let alone the 1970s or 80s with the designer jeans and "Saturday Night Fever" and Studio 54.

So we cope. I hope.