Funny Money
When Ez was visiting Milwaukee the other week, people would invariably ask him about Ithaca Hours whenever he told them where's he's from. No, dudes, don't look at your watch! You are in the Twilight Zone, incidentally, but that's a different story altogether (Rod Serling lived in Ithaca.) Ez is talking about Ithaca's own funny money, that tacky looking scrip people in Ithaca rarely see unless they ride bikes with save the tuna decals plastered on the bumper, shop at trendy, alternative places like the GreenStar and make enough money so they can afford to have a mission in life unlike the rest of us who are just focused on surviving the next NYSEG price boost. Hey gang, we may be burning Ithaca Hours to stay warm this winter. Maybe they're be a huge inflation like postWW1 Germany or present day Zimbabwe. Then we'll have wheelbarrows full of the shit to burn! More on that idea later.
Anyway, where was Ez now? Ok, Ithaca Hours. Introduced a decade ago by Ithaca's own renown anarcho-egoist, Paul Glover, who incidentally lifted the idea from that most capitalist of board games, Monopoly, Ithaca Hours has become one of i-town's leading exports. You say Moosewood Restaurant, people smile and say cheese dog. Only kidding! The Moosebox is world renown. Just because the inspiration for all those original down to earth hippie dippie community cookbooks, Mollie Katzen, sold out, moved to the West Coast to create new fondue recipes for Michael Jackson and Phyllis Diller, doesn't phase people when they extol the virtues of Moose Crate.
So Paul Glover moved to Philly to find new suckers for his health insurance ponzi scheme, and left us with this scroungy play dough. People in the outside world think, oh, shit, man, this stuff keeps value in the community, it says Fuck You to the big corporate banking interests, here's the flag finger, Chase Manhattan! What a laugh! What those fools don't know is that you can't buy an entire bagel in Ithaca with a pocketful of Ithaca Hours. That's right. Ithaca's merchants ain't no fools. They're not giving away free merchandise. Typically, and this is generous, merchants only accept half the retail in Hours. So half a bagel? Now figure if you work a miserable job, cleaning toilets for Indonesian graduate students up at Cornell (reverse globalization at work) and you walk in with your hard earned pay check and you can only buy half a Turkey sub at Shortstop. That's why the smart ass smarmy counter clerk tells you. If you want a whole Turkey sub, you need Ithaca Hours! Now is that incentive?
Now here's the kicker. Ithaca merchants, in turn, can't buy anything with the Hours they begrudgingly accept for half or a third of purchase price. They can't pay their NYSEG bill, can't pay their suppliers, the only thing they can do with it is to either buy advertising in the Ithaca Hours magazine or pay their friggin' staff with it! But Jason Fane, Ithaca's own beloved slum lord, doesn't take Ithaca Hours so if you're a barrista living with fifteen other barristas or Cornell dishwashers in some trailer in Varna that is owned by Fane Enterprises, you up the creek, man! Shit, is this sounding more and more like Zimbabwe all the time?
Well, the idiots in Milwaukee don't know that, so, the minute they started asking about Ithaca Hours, Ez went into his wallet and whipped out a wad of Hours. Hey, it was like wampum to these suckers. This is how the West was won! You give me Dakota, I give you these nifty beads, ok? When Ez told his listeners that Ithaca Hours were backed up by the Ithaca Reserve Bank, their eyes lit up. Well, the upshot of this is that Ez bought a restaurant in Milwaukee with his Ithaca Hours. Ez thinks he'll call it Skunk Wood, serve tofu cheese dogs with sprouts.
Next post: Ez tells you how to cause a county wide inflationary spiral that will drastically decrease even more the value of Ithaca Hours and hence reduce your heating bills this winter. 1 wheelbarrow of hours = 1/2 hour heat.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 9:00 AM
