The Way We Live Now: Without pity. You're a crocodile? Now you're a handbag. You're fat? Buy an extra airline seat. You're Jewish? Sammy Davis Jr.'s menorah isn't fucking free, you know.

Demand for $50,000 Hermes crocodile-skin handbags is so big that Hermes is now breeding its own crocodiles. Is this a story from 2006? "Hermes already faces a major challenge producing 3,000 crocodile bags a year, the CEO said, adding: 'The world is not full of crocodiles, except the stock exchange!'" Ha ha. I hope people carrying these bags start getting eaten by enraged crocodiles. I really do.

But it's hard out there in the business world, and a dolla is a dolla, no matter whose feelings have to be hurt. More and more, airlines are requiring fat people to buy extra seats on flights if they're too wide to fit into a single one. Fat advocates say planes should build in a row of extra-wide seats and charge more for them, which sounds like a fair solution, but so far it's: buy two seats or get off. For the airlines, this is great. Regular-sized people are happy. And fat people have to pay for the space of two people while only adding the weight of about 1.5 people, meaning the more fat fliers airlines cram on, the more they save on gas! If they can just hang on to the same tiny seat sizes until all Americans are obese, this will singlehandedly save the airline industry.

Everything gets a pass these days. Some poor sap paid for Sammy Davis Jr.'s menorah after he died, but now the owner "wanted to sell it because of tough economic times." Surprisingly, it didn't fetch the minimum $9,000. It's kind of a crappy menorah. It doesn't matter. Buy high, sell higher. The menorah went back in the safe deposit box. You want it? Pray for lottery numbers. Even god has to pay up.
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