Whiny Crybaby Americans

Yesterday Phil Gramm, former senator, proclaimed that Americans are a bunch of whiners. The exact quote isn’t as bad as the media portrays and of course both Presidential candidates jumped on it too. Why is it that when the truth hurts we run to mommy? Gramm could not be more correct.

America has turned into a clan of greedy, me-too, one-uppers. We work too hard and spend too little time with our families for what? So we can get a bigger house than we need, drive a car that we don’t need, send our kids to schools they don’t need, and get the American Dream that we don’t need. You know that dream of owning a house and all that crap that we are fed by the media and then when it doesn’t happen it’s another story for the never full media Godzilla. I wish we were still in the ‘50’s. One person worked, kids grew up at home and not in daycare, a household had one car, and whole families lived in, gasp, a 1,200 sf house. There were no cell phones, people didn’t spend time watching TV because it didn’t exist, no email or voicemail, and the appliances you bought lasted longer than two years. Families even saved money.

Nowadays everyone wants everything yesterday. Kids out of school get a job and immediately want a new car. People get married and go house hunting the next day. You realize your neighbor has bigger rims so you throw yours in the trash and go buy some spinners. I still think the invention of the credit card and it’s proliferation through all of society has caused this. On top of that, the easier it was to get something the easier it is to be tired of it and want something else.

I’m not sure if this is due to bad parenting or not. I don’t think it is taught to kids but if those same kids were involved in the finances of the household they would be the first to ask “How do you buy that if we don’t have the money?” It’s more of a learned trait than a taught lesson. I have read so many cry baby stories about people who bought a house and now they are getting foreclosed on. Unless you lost a job, there should be no reason to lose your house. If you do, you couldn’t afford it in the first place. Here is a perfect example http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/10/news/economy/rios/index.htm?postversion=2008071014 a woman who makes 25k a year bought a 400k+ home. REALLY? And I am supposed to feel sorry for her? Her “Low payment” was 4,100. Do the math, that’s 49,200 a year. I didn’t take Calculus II but I think that’s more than her yearly salary. It wasn’t the real estate agents fault it was her own fault! We aren’t in a recession, we are in a brain-cession.
We need to stop looking to the govt for help. Neither candidate is going to do anything for you. You need to do something for yourself. We need to go back to basics. What’s important and what isn’t. We are a bunch of whiners. We whine about everything (Yours truly excluded. I get a free pass) and anything and we get ourselves into a load of shit and always expect someone to pull us out. We need to make the changes at home and there needs to be a paradigm shift in America but I doubt that will ever happen. Maybe now that things are more expensive, people will have to decide if they need two cars or all the crap they buy. Once they make those changes, just like corporations did after 9/11, they may realize they don’t need all those things and once their situation turns around they will be in great shape. Yeah right.

Gift Cards Part Deux

I was listening to the best morning show in the world when they started talking about a topic I have ranted on before. The biggest scam in business. No, not oil companies making a profit (God forbid) or Google buying the US government. No, it’s gift cards. Remember when a gift card was actually a gift certificate? Remember when you spent $18 of the $20 on the certificate and you got two bucks back? Everyone knows why you don’t get change (So you spend more then the card is originally. I have touched on all this before but I neglected to mention another hypocrisy. For accounting purposes (flip your Firefox to youtube if you don’t care about money or math) a business cannot count that gift card as income until it is used. So technically it is not even their money that they are keeping from you. It is stuck in electronic purgatory like the bully holding your lunch money over your head while you jump around like a meth head.

The interesting part is that after two years they are able to start taking a percentage of the balance of cards each month. Needless to say there are millions of dollars of unclaimed gift card balances each year. Of course no one in govt is willing to bring this up as an issue except for California where Arnold has proposed legislation to require balances be returned in cash when they reach a certain level. I am sure that the Dems in the CA assembly will suggest those balances go into the General Fund but that’s a whole other column.

"These eyes are cryin’"

I think we need to revisit the bathroom rules. It seems there are still some guys out there who not only enjoy talking at the urinal but they make actual eye contact. This is not ok. Men should never, ever make eye contact when their hot link is out of the package. There really is only one reason why….something could be said. For example you’re at the urinal and a casual acquaintance sidles up to you and starts chatting it up. You, knowing the rules, do not speak nor make eye contact. You continue to ignore these welcoming moves until you double check he is gone and BAM you make eye contact and in your mind he says “So you like my junk?”. In actuality he said “Man, am I drunk” but that doesn’t matter. You have been eye violated and your pe-hymen has been broken. There is no turning back from this and you will now be going to counseling for the rest of your life. This guy is akin to a vampire in that once he breaks your pe-hymen, you will now roam the world’s bathrooms breaking other men’s. So please, let’s stop this scourge before it’s too late.

The Rolling Twinkie

The backpack was a great invention. It allowed us to carry many things long distances without much discomfort. The wheel and Twinkies were also great inventions. One allowed us to push things around and the other allowed us to quickly clog our arteries and Levis. What do they have in common? Because we eat too many Twinkies, we had to add wheels to our backpacks. Was this really necessary? Shouldn’t we be taking wheels OFF the backpacks because we eat too many Twinkies?

Next Stop.....Hell

This is the tenth time that I have written that it has been awhile since I last wrote something and I promise to do better. As if I broke curfew and you’re my mommy. Well I apologize to no one so I am sorry and promise to do better.

I started taking the train into work for the last month or so. Most people have started doing it to save money on gas and parking. I did it because my life was simply not annoying enough and I enjoy waiting around for a couple hours to get home. Don’t worry I have a lot of stories chambered but I need to space them out since material is not my strong suit. So after waiting over an hour for the train to arrive yesterday, I boarded and sat behind blowhard veteran everyone-cares-about-what-I-have-to-say train guy. Luckily he had already located his next victim and had commenced the mental raping. He fit the mold perfectly with his large see through backpack and Star Trek communicator (Err, I mean Bluetooth). He was the type of guy who talks on the phone in a manner where you cannot tell if he is talking to you or the victim on the other end of the radio wave.

His current victim was desperately fighting the pull but kept getting sucked in. He told her how he was busy keeping track of the time the train was arriving and departing from each stop, and that he had an appointment in the next city. He was also giving her navigation tips for destinations she had already told him she never went to and never would. His appointment was at City Hall. He then proceeded to tell her exactly how he was going to get there when he got off the train and even pointed it out from the train. It’s the building next to the Tower Theater with the numbers “311” on it, in case you were wondering.

By this time I felt so relieved that this poor girl had been thrown to the beast instead of me that I almost missed when he stood up to leave. In what appeared to be slow motion, he rose from his seat and went to leave. This was when I first noticed the see through backpack. Then he reached into the overhead compartment and pulled down the ultimate weapon of destruction. He strapped on the black leather fanny pack and everyone quickly moved to the side to let him by.