How to Survive the Tough Economy

It was recently reported by one of the top economists in the country that the worst is yet to come in the mortgage crisis, and that a major US bank will fail in the coming months. I want to offer some advice to anyone out there worried about your money.

A small initial investment of an electric fence will yield big results when debt collectors come around.

Cancel your expensive HD sports package...I'm just kidding, try making your kids pay rent.

Sell your Beanie Babies for scraps.

Vote for the candidate who has real answers for our economy...Jim Cramer.

Take your money out of stocks and bonds and invest in lottery tickets.

Learn a useful skill, like sucking up to the Chinese.

Habits of Highly Abnormal People

How similar are my bathroom habits to the rest of the human race? It's a solo experience. I've never read a book on it. How would I know if the proper etiquette was to fold toilet paper into a little swan before usage?

I was blissfully unaware that I was holding my kitchen utensils wrong until an embarrassingly older age. I had been using the shovel grip, as I found it to be the most efficient way for scooping huge portions of food into my mouth. Maybe I'm less perceptive than most, but I never noticed I was eating differently.

I also never realized that I drink bottles with the side of my mouth. No one informed me for years that it looked like I either had a mouth injury, or was European.

The thing that usually gives me comfort is the feeling that given a certain situation, almost everyone will respond the same way. Call it instinct, or the shared human experience, but I figure my thoughts and actions are the same as others all around the world. That's why I'm sure that like me, most people tie their pants around their heads in the bathroom to avoid any mess.

Absurdism

Deciding something is "pointless" is all a matter of perception. I saw two things yesterday that were absurd to me at the time. One was a town that created the largest Dairy Queen Blizzard of all time. The other was a man who has devoted his life to creating art out of old gum.

Why do I think these people are so ridiculous? I'm laying on my bed watching TV in my underwear and these people are outside mixing 40 tons of ice cream. At least they are getting exercise. We tend to think of stamp collectors and Trekkies as losers. If they had just devoted their time to bouncing a ball on their foot instead of learning Vulcan they would be admired by people everywhere.

If you throw a basketball into a hoop for hours on end you are hard-working and dedicated. If you replace that basketball with a whiffle ball, you are considered special. The standards are pretty tight.

The Olympics have really highlighted the differences in what cultures see as important. Who would have thought that being really good in badminton or table tennis would get you anywhere in life? Maybe the Chinese felt the same way about swimming.

If making a giant Blizzard is what make someone happy, why should they feel weird about it? I say keep it up. If you want to flood downtown Denver with ice cream, just make sure you mixed in some Butterfinger chunks.

Critical Thinking

There are times when it's really quiet and I can really start to think that I feel like a stunning idea is about to cross my mind. Like I'm just one neuron away from revolutionizing mankind.

It's a long shot. What could I possibly think of that billions of people over thousands of years missed. Socrates and Nietzsche could sit and think for hours. I have a the attention span of a infant squirrel.

Still, what if I have one odd brain cell that helps me understand spacetime like nobody else. An extra little push to compose a breathtaking song. I just sit and think.

Then I begin to hum a song from a commercial I saw earlier. Apparently I'm just bored

The Road To Ruin

Pursuit of happiness is an ugly phrase. Jefferson made a mistake when he included it in the founding of our country. There is no pursuit of happiness. There is no magic road to travel down towards bliss.

Over the years, people have tried to quantify happiness so that others could pursue this goal given to them by their glorious nation. With advertising it turned into: happiness is a car, or toaster, or gym membership. When individuals reach this mythical goal of being able to have anything, they realize they aren't any happier than before. They either set a new goal, fame or power, or sink into an empty feeling.

Jefferson should have wrote about the pursuit of health, stability, safety, or jets big enough to play 9 holes of golf on. If happiness was a quest, Americans would be laughing and skipping around. Happiness is not a pursuit, it is a state of mind.

Georgia On My Mind

It took me a while to get my head around the Georgia/Russian conflict, but I finally did enough research to understand (I ran across the Wikipedia article). I will try to explain it in simple terms.

Georgia is me, Russia is a guy named Bob, and South Ossentia is a bologna sandwich. I own a bologna sandwich, but Bob tells me I am not allowed to touch it. One day, I am really hungry and I take a bite out of it. Bob beats me until I am unconscious.

Was the sandwich really the issue? Was Bob pissed off because I was doing well and he hadn't been cool since the '80s? Was he mad that I was building a pipeline that bypassed him when shipping oil from Azerbaijan to the West? No one knows for sure.

People in the Caucasus really need to start mingling with one another. At least start hanging out at the same malls.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Caucasus-ethnic_en.svg

If people in Milwaukee looked different, spoke another language, and were living off of radishes, then they would probably attempt to break free from the vicious rule of Wisconsin.

Fully Developed

A "Developing Country" is a nation that actually has to use its workforce to make useful items. A "Developed Country" is a nation that uses its workforce to discuss and pass around the items that other countries have made.

Money is now just digits in a database. We have invented a genius system where someone gives us a bunch of things we need, and in return we give them a couple numbers on the computer. The United States imports far more than it exports. That's like giving someone a yo-yo, getting a Wii in return, and calling it a fair trade.

If the whole system were to collapse, who would actually be useful?

Bankers would obviously be gone, along with anyone working with the stock market, finances, investment firms, or insurance.

No more salesmen, advertisers, or marketers. All of them just move around other country's products.

Goodbye to the huge portion of the software industry that deals with banks and insurance.

After all the other related jobs are gone, we are left with small pockets of resistance. The few independent bakers and butchers left. Farmers in the midwest. The small yo-yo manufacturers. Wait, all yo-yos are now made in Taiwan. I take it back, they just give us the Wii and yo-yo for free.