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A friend of mine just had a mid-life crisis. He’s married to a wonderful woman. They have two terrific kids. He’s making a lot of money writing movies and he calls me up and says "I don’t feel like I exist anymore. I don’t feel in the moment." Well that’s the ultimate American luxury isn’t it? If you’re real successful you can take time to be miserable. National Geographic couldn’t find even one village in South America where there’s a 45 year old guy that won’t come out of the hut because he doesn’t feel in the moment.
These people don’t have time to be depressed. There’s no mid-life crisis tribal guy moping around saying "What’s the point of going on? I’ll never be the chief. I’m always going to be just another guy with a spear. I’m just another guy with a big wooden disk in his lip." That guy doesn’t have time to be depressed because everyday he has to climb a 400 ft. tree and kill a wombat with a sharp stick. I’m not sure if anybody really eats wombats or if you kill them with sticks or if they live in trees but my point is the Republicans are holding up the progress of the country for selfish political gain. Excuse me, that’s another point. This point is that we have become big babies. Life is never perfect.
Sure there are disappointments. I’ve never going to pitch for the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. I’m never going to see the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. But I won’t go hungry if I don’t climb a tree and kill a wombat. So how disappointing can life be? I’m not quite middle-aged yet but if I ever feel like I’m "not in the moment" please poke me with a sharp stick.
With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Great news my fellow taxpaying friends-the IRS has seen the light. Your new pals at the Internal Revenue Service announced today they have turned over a new leaf and want to be your friend. And with friends like that, who needs enemies or accountants?
The new IRS, they claim, is going to be "taxpayer friendly." In other developments duck hunters no longer want to shoot ducks, but instead be their friend and help them live a long prosperous life, football teams will no longer try to block and tackle one another but in a calm and reasonable manner negotiate a time and place to move up and down the field and Bill Gates has announced that he now sees Windows as nothing more than a rip-off of the Macintosh operating system, feels horrible about it and is going to give all the money back.
Of course the truth of the matter is, the IRS is not your friend, no matter what they say. And they can’t be, because we have money and they want it. So, we just can’t be friends. Our relationship can be fair and civil and legal, but when people want to take something from you that you don’t want to give, rarely can it be described as friendly. As much as they may want to be, the IRS is can’t be consumer oriented like Nordstrom’s, where even if you didn’t buy snow tires there, you can return them for a refund. Because they take money from us, the IRS is always going to be the enemy.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s face it, when it comes to money people are basically greedy. We want to keep every nickel we’ve got but still expect the government to build new schools and Star Wars and Lawrence Welk museums. So even if, as a group, the IRS takes Prozac or some sort of happy-pill they will always be in an adversarial relationship with us. What they should want to be is the kind of opponent who can shake your hand after it’s over because we respect how they played the game.
And if by the way, you are a duck, I was kidding earlier about hunters being your friend. They still want to kill you. Don’t try to strike up a conversation with a group of guys wearing camouflage.
Millionaires can spit on non-millionaires
For me the best part of Spring is the start of Baseball. Aside from my futile annual wish that the Cubs win the World Series another wish for this season is that there are no more aerial shots provided by the Kroger Food Stores Blimp. Too many people have blimps. Why is there a Kroger Food Store Blimp?! The Goodyear Blimp makes sense because tires are made of rubber and their blimp demonstrates how effective Goodyear is at making stretchy stuff that can hold air. But the Kroger Food Store Blimp?! If the Kroger Food Store Blimp looks like an empty plastic bag floating through the sky it could remind people that they need to buy bread but that’s a real stretch.
And I hope the players treat the umpires better this year because professional athletes have got a lot of making up to do. Last year Roberto Alomar spit in an umpire’s face and somehow got to stay in the league because like Michael Irvin the cocaine taking/hooker hiring football player and Dennis Rodman the head-butting, crotch kicking basketball player, Roberto Alomar the spitting baseball player, is rich. And distasteful as it is, the penalty for not being rich in this country is those that are rich can get away with spitting on you.
The problem is the only person who can discipline a spitting millionaire is the person that makes him a millionaire. But in the case of Roberto Alomar, the spitting millionaire works for someone who depends on Alomar to maintain his own status as a millionaire, spitting or non-spitting as the case may be. And here is a very basic rule of economics, if someone makes you a millionaire you don’t figuratively spit in their face just for literally spitting in the face of someone who does not make you a millionaire. Just like Watergate, follow the money and you will understand everything.
Of course it’s us, the fans, that make them all millionaires but to expect fans to get organized and punish the millionaires is, well of course... spitting in the wind. What the fans and umpires should do is buy our own blimp shaped like a giant lugee and have it hover over Roberto Alomar this whole season. The giant lugee blimp might force all professional athletes to re-evaluate their behavior and the kids of America would be constantly reminded, spitting is a bad thing.
I don’t get where all the money is coming from.
Is it just me or have the airlines gone to hell? My last three flights were canceled and I’ve been stuck for hours at the airport, losing business and going crazy. None of these canceled flights were fully booked and because the airlines don’t want to lose money on flying a half-empty plane, I contend they make up some fogged-in, hydraulic repair, the-dog-ate-our-homework-so-it’s-not-our-fault-you-don’t-get-to-go-where-we-said-we’d-take-you story, and screw you and me, the customer. And you know why the airlines can get away with treating us like that? Because you can’t walk from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, that’s why. Especially on short notice with a golf bag.
So what can we the people do about big corporations lying to us, abusing us in the name of profits? First of all, write a letter of complaint every single time they jerk you around. Tell the offending airline that you are going to stand outside their terminal for 30 days in a row and pay people to not fly their airline, that you will use your personal fortune, money you inherited from your grandmother who invented the hoola hoop, to buy total strangers tickets on another airline and hire a masseuse to give these people a foot massage in first class if they will just fly another airline. If, by the way, you do have lots of money to spend, please, please go ahead and actually do this. Otherwise just threaten to do it in your letter.
If you have to fly an airline that has screwed you over in the past, once in the air, complain in a high, wheezy voice for "More peanuts, more peanuts, I want more peanuts." And then when the flight attendant brings the peanuts, toss them on the floor in disgust and say, "Take these stale legumes away from me you silly person." Just before landing, claim you heard a baby in the overhead compartment and demand the pilot search the plane. After they don’t find a baby, claim you’re sure you heard a baby’s voice up there saying "On the left side of the plane you can see the Grand Canyon."
My point is unless we make a stink, there is no reason for airlines to change how they do business. They say they love to fly but what shows is they love to make money. If that weren’t the case they’d give us cashews and normal sized pillows.
How can they make money on the Internet?
Have you ever talked to someone who can actually explain how companies makes money from the Internet? I’m not talking about the triple-X-rated web-sites. I understand how they make a living. Horny-computer-able guys, pay good money to access "live nude-models hot-sex" sites whose visual quality is similar to looking at a porno tape through cloudy binoculars.
As long as we are talking about it, how erotic is cyber-sex? Phone sex I get. But there’s no talking in Cyber-sex... it’s typing. How can typing be sexy? Isn’t typing normally associated with work while talking is something you do when you take a break from work? Typing is not fun and slow. Telegraph sex would be quicker. Da da da daa da, da da da daaa da. "Ooohhhh...."
But my question is, how can these tech company stocks that deal with the Internet be so sky high if nobody can explain how they make money? If I don’t trust live-in-the-flesh car salesmen would I ever buy a car from a faceless, nameless web-site with a 14.4 modem? I certainly don’t read the tiny little ads that are kind-of-legible on these web-sites.
I love the fact these stocks are going nuts because I’ve invested in these companies but I’m scared because... I’ve invested in these companies. And I don’t think they can make any money. The only thing that really seems to work on the Internet is people passing around stories, like the one about the fire fighters in the mountains who came across a dead scuba diver. He was dressed in a wet suit, flippers, tank, regulator, the whole bit. Apparently he had been scuba diving near the surface, minding his own business, when one of those super-scooper airplanes swooped down, gulped him up and flew him, kicking and screaming I am sure, up into the mountains and deposited him and the water he was swimming in, onto the forest fire he helped put out.
I have received an e-mail about that story from a number of people and then a later e-mail from super-sleuths who have proved that the scuba-diver in the forest fire story is nothing more than an urban myth/Cyber-hoax. How all these tech companies can make money off that is beyond me, but I am willing to listen to any reasonable explanation.
Kidney thieves are back in the news
A friend of mine is making a career out of debunking urban myths, especially those that whiz around the Internet. He has dis-proven the scuba diver dumped into a forest fire by a super-scooper airplane story, he has found no credible evidence of a gerbil ever having had an intimate union with a famous actor or anyone else for that matter and most recently he proved no kidney has ever been stolen from an unwilling donor and sold on the black market.
But the best rumors never die and so the kidney thieves story is spreading around the country once again. If you’ve never heard about the serial kidney crooks, in short, guys in bars in Manhattan are approached by two drop dead gorgeous, to-die-for, stunning, all-time fabulous babes, oozing animal lust and within seconds he’s convinced they want to do a three-some. Before leaving the bar the femme fatales slip a mickey in his drink and he wakes up a week later in a hospital, barely alive... minus a kidney, which will soon be sold on New York’s vital-organs black market.
When I first heard this story a few years ago I thought, wow, that’s a rough town. Forget about pick pockets. Forget about not wearing your Rolex in the subway. In New York, people are after your guts.
Then I thought, what kind of person would steal your kidney? A guy who knows where your kidney is and someone who wants to buy it, apparently. But when you start to think about it, there is a lot of tissue/blood type matching that has to go on and I am sure, when asked where they got the kidney from, suppliers of vital organs can’t just say "Oh... somewhere." So while this may be a fun, scary urban legend... in the end, it makes no sense.
But what does this say about us, our society, our culture that people believe there are kidney thieves? That capitalism works...that’s what it says. The fact that this kidney thieves story has taken on a life of its own shows that the American entrepreneurial spirit soars unabated, that we as a people see economic opportunity everywhere in the land of the free and the home of the brave enough to try something new. Sure there are the nay-sayers who claim you can’t make a decent living selling kidneys you have stolen from unsuspecting tourists. But the vast majority of Americans are not capable of being that negative- they have the can-do spirit that has made this country great, that keeps our economy expanding and keeps this totally groundless and illogical story about kidney thieves alive and well.
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copyright 1998 Tim Bedore --- all rights reserved