In the middle of the country that is now so common no one remarks on it anymore. There are strip malls that used to have 15 stores in them including the anchor stores on either end that are down to just having four still open.

The only reason they are still open is that the mall owners can use it as a tax write off. Even full up malls are taking off former major end stores because all they do is suck up HVAC costs and are losing them money. They know they'll never get a new renter for them.

There's a sort of beautiful bleakness here sometimes. And I don't mean beautiful in a good way but in an accidental way.

hey now!

the economy is getting better! the Daily News told me that 209,000 new j*bs were created last month when i brought the paper in this morning.

the fact that the expectation was ~270K wasn't mentioned, but hey, you can't get into details in a newspaper column, right?

we're doomed.