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Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Debt
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure ninteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. —Charles Dickens
I subscribe to the New York Times, mainly because I feel that I need a really good laugh at least once a day. Last Sunday, however, the establishment paper of record really out did itself with a little ditty entitled, "My Personal Credit Crisis" by a jamokus named Edmund L. Andrews. In four unintentionally hilarious pages this boob, who describes himself as an "economics reporter" (Jeez, no wonder he's an idiot) describes how he dug himself into the hole for $700,000 by buying stuff he couldn't afford and didn't really need. It was the steady drip, drip of heart's blood that really got me.
Why does this guy think I'm going to feel pity for him? Ed, I have a piece of news for you. You're an idiot. Film at eleven.
I then got to thinking about the carefully cultivated passivity of Americans and their willingness to surrender their power to the state and their "elected" officials in all matters. However, the economic crisis isn't all Greenspan's fault, or Bernanke's fault, or the Dalai Obama's fault—not when there's guys out there like Ed.
Ed, coming off a bruising divorce that picked him clean financially, did what any other penniless nitwit with grotesquely exaggerated feelings of entitlement would do—he bought a $450,000 house for himself and his new squeeze, Patricia, who had been a housewife for the last twenty years. His take-home pay didn't even cover the mortgage. Good plan, Ed!
It took our gilded mid-life crisis couple exactly five months to run completely out of money. They made this brilliant discovery one morning when they realized they had only $196 in the bank-to last them all month. Consequently, they did what any other red-blooded American couple would do. They started living on credit cards.
Ed, in between wailing about how Pat couldn't hold a job, details some of their expenses. Here goes-this is for one month, mind you-$350 for groceries, $700 at J Crew, $179 at Gap Kids, and $700 for airplane tickets. Are you kidding me? These two impoverished fools spent $700 at J CREW?!! Why are you flying around on planes, Ed, when you have no money for food? How about Greyhoundl?
Ed and Pat then got some good news. Their house had gone up in value. So, being a couple of yo-yo's, they did a refi, paid down the credit cards, and kept up the spending spree. Ed estimates that they regularly spent $3000 more per MONTH than they took in.
Of course, as a great man once said, if something can't last forever, it won't. The end came for Ed and Pat. Those nasty credit card bills, they kept right on coming in and piling up. Funny how they do that. And they kept getting bigger and bigger all the time, too. It just wasn't fair. And pretty soon the $450,000 house wasn't worth $450,000 any more, either.
Now Ed just sits in his worthless shack of a house, waiting for the bailiffs to evict him. He has been waiting now for eight months, because there are so many other Eds besides him that his mortgage company can't deal with all of them. This gives Ed a vague sense of unease. Hey, guess what, Ed? Maybe your mortgage company just isn't that into you. This is obviously what our nation has become—a group of useless numbskulls who don't even have basic life skills or know how to add.
If ever a country needed a correction it is ours. You can't buy things you can't afford. You must set aside money to pay bills. Yadda yadda yadda. This is not exactly the wisdom of the ages, people. I've been very poor in my life and am now comfortably off-probably because I never lived like Ed and Pat. There is no shame in being poor-but there is shame in being a fool. The Eds and Pats of this nation are its shame.
12:35 pm est
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Lying with the Stars
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun" —Ecclisiastes
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to "Lying With The Stars.", the exciting new game show where real live professional athletes try to explain why their tests for performance enhancing drugs came out positive. Whoever comes up with the most improbable explanation, wins.
Former contestants include, Roger Clemens ("I didn't do it"), Rafael Palmeiro ("I thought it was a vitamin B-12 shot"), J.C. Romero ("I bought it by mistake at GNC") and Alex Rodriguez ("I was stupid") .
I think we all agree that Alex won that round as his explanation actually contained a small grain of truth, which makes his answer the most improbable of all.
This week's contestant is one of Major League Baseball's biggest stars—Manny Ramirez! For his explanation Manny has decided to try something slightly different as he is blaming his own personal physician and brandishing a prescription. Of course the prescription is for a women's fertility drug, which has an off-label use as a facilitator for coming down off a cycle of steroids, which can be pretty tough as the body ceases to make its own testosterone, instead becoming dependent on the testosterone from the PEDs. This can cause shrunken testicles, impotence, and depression—nothing any man in his right mind would sign up for.
All kidding aside, professional athletes, successful ones that is, all take performance enhancing drugs. The reason why Jose Canseco has been so on the money with his predictions about what ballplayers are on steroids is that he has the easiest job in the world. Any idiot could go out there and name any ten ballplayers as PED users and the chances are he'd be totally correct—all ballplayers use.
The time has really come for us all to start acting like adults and to move on from this hysteria about PEDs. They are here and they are going to stay here. There is no way to eradicate them, save locking the players in cells every night, and even that would probably be useless. Pandora's Box has been flung wide open. It will not be closed again in our lifetime. It makes me choke with laughter when I hear sports writers talk about "The Steroids Era", as if this were a thing of the past. Well, we're now in "The HGH Era". Feel better?
(Players have moved to HGH, or Human Growth Hormone, because there is no test for it. It would be akin to testing to see if you had blood in your veins or marrow in your bones)
Our only hope is for some ballplayer or better yet group of ballplayers who has real courage-I don't think Manny Ramirez is the one as he lives in his own little world - to sit down and explain to the fans what PEDs are, what they do and don't do, that they are not for youngsters, and that using them is not cheating as they are used universally. Jose Canseco tried to do this but got crucified. However the fans and owners are becoming sick of this situation and are possibly even dimly beginning to realize that it is not going away now or ever. Maybe now is the time for such an effort to be greeted with relief and not derision. I know after spending millions of dollars on Manny dreadlock wigs, Manny billboards, and even a special section in the stands called "Mannywood" where fans could watch their idol as he patrolled left field the Los Angeles Dodgers agree with me. The money has all been poured down the proverbial rat hole now that the object of all this attention has been suspended for fifty games. And for what? For getting caught.
Hey, even the lowest class of gym rat like me uses steroids. They retard the aging process, elevate the mood, and build healthy muscle tissue. What could be better? Of course it is possible to ABUSE steroids, if one is a fool, but then this is true of any drug.
I for one think it's time to get out of the locker rooms and back on the playing field. PEDs are a part of the lives of professional athletes, like protective gear, cortisone shots, personal trainers, and high-powered agents. It's not a world that is meant to be scrutinized by we fans. These guys are all grown men, and it is not my business what they choose to put in their bodies. Nor is it the government's business. Our bodies belong to us, not some government bureaucracy.
Let's all get back to enjoying what is supposed to be a GAME, for heck's sake.
And next week coming up on "Lying With The Stars" we move to the PGA Tour. Our first contestant? Tiger Woods!
Just wait and see.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Guns of Steel
"I don't know anything about cars." —Edward Whitacre Jr., New head of General Motors
(Editors' note- in honor of Maureen Dowd, this column contains plagiarism- but instead of plagiarizing from bloggers we've used all dead people)
It was the worst of times, and it was the worst of times. There were wars, and rumors of wars. Soul crushing was it at that dawn to be alive, but to be young was utterly nerve wracking.
Just imagine—you have a choice, once you've graduated horribly in debt from college, knowing little or nothing more than you did four years ago, between working at your local Starbucks' (assuming it's still even open) or joining the doomed-to-fail Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran conflict.
Yep, that's that good ol' American hubris. Everyone from Alexander The Great to various Tsars, Moguls, Commies, and even Queen Victoria got their heads handed to them in Afghanistan, but hey! This is the Emperor Obamacletian invading now. How can he fail?
What is it about being elected President of the United States? These guys all turn overnight from Mahatma Gandhi to Attila the Hun. One pictures them foaming in the mouth in the Oval Office, screaming, "I want my own war, goddammit!" Muammar Qaddafi even weighed in on this topic during his historic trip to Rome (See? Even people other than Barack, the All-Highest, get to do something historic once in a blue moon).
"It is not very intelligent to chase terrorists down the Afghan mountains or Central Asia" said Qaddafi. "That's impossible. We must look at their reasons."
Reasons? You mean people other than Americans have reasons? Thoughts? Feelings? What a concept! Now we can all sit back and enjoy the time-tested ritual of the CIA interfering in the Iranian elections, starting riots, and claiming "vote fraud", which is hilarious. When the CIA or the NED can inform me who won Florida in 2000, then I can feel I will be able to point a finger at some other country.
What earthly difference does it make anyway—we just have another spectacle of the population (in this case the Iranian people) giving up their sovereignty to the state under the guise of "representative democracy". This is simply a more refined version of the same old guff that has been around since the year one. The dictatorship of the state, the tyranny of the tax collectors, and the self-serving misrule of the government departments and bureaucrats. Ever see those wall paintings in those ancient Egyptian tombs showing the tax collector or the scribe holding the peasantry over a barrel as they collected Pharaoh’s taxes? Yep, in 4000 years we've come precisely nowhere.
But, it is not to talk about any of these pertinent and important topics that I come before you today. What we need at this point in time is some sincere and studied triviality. I wish to challenge Michelle Obama to the first annual Let Us Have Peace Arm Contest. The first prize is a wardrobe of sleeveless dresses from J. Crew, and the runner-up receives a baggy cardigan from Talbots. All contestants will be judged on the beauty of the limbs, biceps measurement, and wrist-to-triceps differential. We will then move on to the strength portion of the competition, in which bench-presses, bicep curls, and the clean-and-jerk will be performed until one contestant or the other throws in the towel. The third portion of the competition will consist of mud wrestling, best three throws out of five.
Ok, Michelle, put your arms where your mouth is. Two women enter and one leaves. This will make American Idol and The Real Housewives of New Jersey look like kid stuff. Who cares about the collapse of the dollar—just look at those guns of steel.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Maximum Leader of Imperialistic Power Swats Flies in Public, Kills Afganis in Private.
"Give me Dick Cheney, a waterboard, and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders." —Jesse Ventura
When you have a website you very naturally get some weird e-mails from some strange people. Look at this one, for example.
From: President Barack Obama<president@messages.whitehouse.gov>
To: velvet500@gmail.com
Subject: Time to roll up your sleeves
Date: Jun 22, 4:07 PM
The White House, Washington
Dear Friend,
Last week, I announced United We Serve—a nationwide call to service challenging you and all Americans to volunteer this summer and be part of building a new foundation for America.
And when I say "all," I mean everyone, young and old from every background, all across the country. We need individuals, community organizations, corporations, foundations, and our government to be part of this effort.
Today, for the official kick off of United We Serve, members of my administration have fanned out across America to participate in service events and encourage all Americans to join them.
The First Lady is rolling up her sleeves and getting to work too. But, before she headed out today, she asked me to share this message with you.
A Message From The First Lady [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/UnitedWeServeKickOff/ ]
Our nation faces some of the greatest challenges it has in generations, and we know it's going to take a lot of hard work to get us back on track.
While Michelle and I are calling on every American to participate in United We Serve, the call to service doesn't end this fall. We need to stay involved in our towns and communities for a long time to come. After all, America's new foundation will be built one neighborhood at a time—and that starts with you.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
PETA has always been one of those groups that totally baffle me. I mean, here they are getting all bent out of shape about a dead fly, when American and NATO forces are slaughtering innocent Afghani villagers with air strikes on the ground. Thinking this hurts "The Taliban", which seems to be any male above the age of fifteen who is against the ruling elite in Kabul turning their country into some sort of narco-terrorist haven, which is backed up by foreign forces.
If I was an Afghani, I would despise the Americans. Hell, I am not an Afghani and I despise them. Not the poor grunts on the ground, but the geniuses that got us into this doomed-to-fail enterprise. And has it occurred to these bleeding hearts in PETA to add up the body count in Iraq due to our meddling? I bet that some flies and camels and goats perished as well. This might give them some sort of a springboard to express outrage as human life seems to mean so little to them.
One reads that Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, and the new American commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley A. McChrystal, are coming up with a new protocol so that they kill Afghani women and children at a slower pace than has been happening in the past. This, they say, will make the Afghanis turn to terrorism at a slower pace and hate us slightly less than what they do already.
According to a United Nations report, the amount of Afghan civilians killed in 2008 was 40 percent higher than in 2007. Of course I have a great solution to this thorny problem—leave. Any study of what is now popularly known as fourth-generation warfare tells us that when you simply start killing off the local population instead of actually fighting armed men or insurgents, you have already lost. In point of fact, when is the last time that a population lost a guerilla war to conventional forces? I think that it was shortly after the earth cooled, or during the Peloponnesian War, or something like that.
Give up, stop killing people, and come home. I know, I know—one might just as well waste one's breath trying to get Jon and Kate back together again. The March of Folly rolls on. We must, we are told, win in Afghanistan. Win what, one wonders. But don't ask me. I'm going to join United We Serve and be busy from now on waving my peacock feather fan. With my sleeves rolled up, of course.
Wow, I don't know about you, but this message just makes me feel like racing down to the corner of the street with a spade. Unfortunately, I do not possess a spade, but there, it just shows you. It's what I've always wanted to be my whole life, a cog in Barack Obama's machine. Possibly my part in building the new foundation for America could be standing behind him whenever he makes one of his inevitable appearances on TV. I mean, seriously, this guy doesn't get up in the morning, that he isn't made up with grease paint and powder, and waving a giant peacock feather fan, so that he doesn't have to swat any more flies himself in public and upset PETA.
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