I’ve been acting silly lately. I’ve spent my time thinking about the people out there who have lost their jobs, their homes, their healthcare, even their health. I’ve thought about those who sleep in their cars, on relatives’ couches, or on park benches. I should’ve been thinking about the people in this country who are truly suffering: bankers’ girlfriends and Brown University students.

I’m always a bit late to the game, so I just discovered Dating a Banker Anonymous, a blog written by the wives and girlfriends of Wall Street’s finest (the financial rats who, in the absence of the regulation cat, destroyed our economy) who are learning to go without the necessities. That is, go without jewelry, opera tickets, facials, weekend trips to Europe, decent sex, and large allowances. These women thought they had attained their goal — you know, relationships based on the exchange of sex for money. If they can’t be distracted by shiny things, they might have to face the fact that they serve no real purpose in life.

Initially, I thought, like many others, that this was a joke. As the days go by, it appears that these women are very real and very serious. A beauty writer (Seriously? Beauty writer? Could you be more useless?) in New York told The New York Times: "One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35," Ms. [Dawn Spinner] Davis said. "It’s not what I signed up for."

That whole sickness-health/richer-poorer thing…who knew you were supposed to mean it?

The media has mentioned a "feminist backlash," but I have no doubt that behind every foot-stamping girlfriend is a pouting, empty-handed banker.

The suffering is not limited to Wall Street. It extends all the way to Thayer Street…in Providence, Rhode Island, home to Brown University. Brown students are best known to my fellow locals for blindly walking straight into oncoming traffic on a daily basis. I guess a high SAT score means never having to look both ways before crossing the street. Anyway, Thayer Street is the trendy, crowded shopping center of the college hill universe. Vintage clothing stores, an art house movie theatre, and, of course, a Starbucks line the busy one-way road. All was right in the Brown world…until two pizza joints opened too close to each other. And now, like, ohmygod, the young are lost. A freshman writer in the Brown Daily Herald student newspaper complains,

The war between Antonio’s and Nice Slice is affecting thousands of Brown students…the central location of Antonio’s and Nice Slice on Thayer and their close proximity to one another makes choosing one pizzeria over the other particularly grueling.

The unemployment rate in Rhode Island has reached ten percent. A few weeks ago, a homeless man froze to death while sleeping under a bridge. But…too many pizza options…what’s a boy to do? Surely not volunteer, or fundraise, or even be aware of the world around you. When the tough gets going, take to the blog! Take the student newspaper’s editorial page! You’re spoiled as hell, and you’re not gonna take it anymore!

Jennifer Leblanc