First Rant - So-called "Progress" a Failure
- posted by Elmo on 2000-10-12 00:00:00
Hello Everyone,
Some of you know me as Brian, some know me by my infamous fraternity nick name "Elmo" that will no doubt follow me around for the rest of my life, and some of you know me by other names that don't bear repeating. "The Rant" is a new weekly feature I have decided to publish that will allow me to share my perceptions and opinions about this crazy world we live in, and what a perfect world it would be if I were in charge. It doesn't really matter to me whether all of you agree with me on all of these issues, or for that matter if any of you agree with me on any of my issues. I fully respect everyone's opinions, because I fully believe that everyone has a right to be wrong. OK, I admit it--that was a bad joke, but don't worry, there are lots more to come in future installments! Anyway, the best thing about "The Rant" is that it allows me a chance to VENT so I don't ever find myself going postal or anything (no offense to Ronn Hubbard, or anyone else who works for the post office!).
So, with all that having been said, here goes my first "Rant". Isn't it kind of funny how we've gotten more and more "progressive", but things really haven't gotten any better? If anything, they've gotten worse. We make higher and higher salaries, but the money we make will buy less and less. Yet we are constantly being bombarded by the corporate advertising industry to go out and spend, spend, spend what little we do have. Or should I say, what we little have left after Uncle Sam takes his whopping 40%. No more dough? Don't worry, we've got credit cards to help you out. With low, low interest rates of 2.9% APR--at least for the first 6 months until it goes back up to the regular rate of 24% APR. Maxed out those cards? Well you're in luck pal! If you are a home owner, you can get a home equity loan from WeOwnU Bank with just another 40 year mortgage. But hey, just hang in there and make all of your payments on time and you'll have excellent credit. All you have to do is work 40 years or so at your job, and then you can retire on about 40% of what you were making, if you're lucky. Oh, wait, they're saying now that Social Security is going broke and us gen-x'ers may not be able to retire until we're 70, and then for a lower percentage than our parents got. And that's with either of the two major candidates' "plans", assuming of course they could even get them through Congress. And what's more, the GAO predicts that our total tax rate (including sales tax, excises, and everything) will be somewhere around 85%. So just to be safe, you might want to throw some of that "extra" cash you've got into the stock market, because we all know how rock solid those dot com investments are.
Some of you may be old enough to remember the utopian hopes from the 60's and 70's that we would soon have a 20 hour work week. I personally long for the return of the 40 hour work week, which has become almost a memory. My last job wanted me to work a minimum of 54 hours a week, on salary. That meant no overtime pay, and it ended up being more like 60 or 70 hour weeks. All for the promise of a measly 10,000 shares of stock from an internet IPO that never happened. We won't even talk about what my life is like now. After my first bad experience with a computer store called "BitHedz", I realized that I never again wanted to own my own business. The truth of the matter is that you don't own the business, it owns you. And if you don't watch it, it will suck up all of your personal time like a black hole. But it was either that or continue to work for Adolph Hitler (my last boss). So after I told Der Fuhrer where to stick it, I had to do something to pay the bills, so I stuck with what I knew and started another computer company... (here comes the shameless plug) WBW Computers, where we put the PERSONAL back into personal computing. You can reach it online at www.wbwcomputers.com, once I get the web site finished.
Of course, in this inane society, human worth is no longer measured by the quality of a person's character, honor, integrity, or anything so intangible like that, but rather how much green-printed paper they are own. Don't believe me? Think I'm being extreme? Try going to a hospital with a life or death emergency, then let it casually slip that you don't have health insurance. You'll learn very quickly just how much human beings are worth in this day and age.
So we have all of these people, working more and more hours for less and less, and they call it progress. Why do we have so much juvenile crime? Well, when both parents are forced to work so one of them can spend their entire salaries to pay their taxes, someone has to raise the kids. For many parents, that leaves day care, the public school system, and the television set to babysit the kids. I was fortunate enough that my grandparents kept me when I was a child while my parents worked, but many of today's elderly don't have that luxury. Many can't even afford the prescription medicine to keep them alive on what social security and Medicare pays, so they have to go out and spend their twilight years still toiling away wherever they can find work, just so they can get by from paycheck to paycheck like the rest of us. God, I love America!
I was actually hoping that some of that chaos that many were predicting for Y2k would really happen, and then maybe some of the sheople might wake up to what was really important in life. Good ole Adolph was always saying how that if we just put in the overtime now, work our butts off and sacrifice today, we would be rich in the future. I really never bought any of his BS, but I stuck around just hoping in vain that somehow it might actually pan out. My coworker Jeremy had this song comparing our plight to a monkey trap, and it was so appropriate. I'd sing it for you, but it just wouldn't translate very well into plain text.
Oh well, if anything positive did come out of the experience it was this: it taught me never to take life for granted again. I had pretty much wasted over half a year of my life, working so much that I had very little home life, almost no social life, and very little private time just to take care of life's necessities. I made more money than I had ever made in my life, just on salary, but I had no time to enjoy it. Six months of my life are gone forever and I can never ever get them back. And that just reinforced what I already knew, that I'm not getting any younger. I just turned 27 last week. That's right, I'm getting to be an old fart. My girlfriend was even wonderful enough to give me a card reminding me of that fact. (Thanks Jodie. Love ya!) My brother Barry, who not too long ago became a Baptist minister (naturally, I wasn't able to attend the service where he was presented with his license), recently did a sermon on the subject of quality time. He told us why the present is called the "present"--because it is a gift. The past is gone, and no one is guaranteed any tomorrows. The present is all we have, and we should treasure it. I once tried to explain something like this to Der Fuhrer, that "no one ever lamented on their death bed that they wished they'd spent more time in the office," but it fell on deaf ears.
So, in closing I want to just encourage everyone not to get taken in by all of the materialistic BS that we are bombarded by day in, day out. You only have one life--make it yours. The mortality rate on this planet is still 100%, so live, for God's sake, because one day you won't. It could be 50 years from now, or it could be tomorrow. So take time out to smell the roses and all of that, and spend time with your loved ones while you still can.
Carpe Diem,
Elmo
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