How can a poor man stand such times and live?

The economy is doing fine without me. I have not been contributing to it very much lately because I'm skint (again). I should be like everyone else and listen carefully to the Budget Spitch, so I can be more aware of stuff and be less skint. But this year's one ('live' at 3.45pm) promises some surprises. Some taxes will go down, some will go up. Smokers will be even more out of pocket than out of breath, people who rushed to buy cars last year will rue their haste. What a spitch it will be. Meantime, the rest of us keep trying to find ways to make a living, spitch or no spitch, and sometimes maybe get a little envious of those who do it with too much ease. I had tea with Cowboy Caleb the other night, and we discussed, among other things, how else we could make money aside from our day jobs. We spend a lot of time online and blogging, he said. There are people who get paid six-figure sums to do what we do, he said. Six-figure sum, you know?, he emphasised. Yes, that is a lot of money in dollars, I said. But we couldn't think of any good reason for people to pay us to do what we do, so we drank our tea and discussed how to make his next Almost Daily Interview a hit. Then I came home and saw that someone had beaten us into the heady world of sponsorships and endorsements. I give you Xiaxue and the t-shirts she appears in: Mr Brown, Mr Miyagi et al are also featured. As mere hyperlinks. Somewhere in the bowels of the site.

Surf stop: LOCALBRAND

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Love Is Everything - k.d. lang - Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.