Another Day, Another Rant

There’s always a bunch of random stuff rattling around in my cage, and I’m thinking it’s time to let it out. We’ll start with the irony of a news item I heard yesterday concerning the local job market. With unemployment on the rise and expected to get worse, the state is looking to hire more people to process all the unemployment claims. So this whole recession thing isn’t too bad after all, if you lose your steady paycheck you can go work for the state, the pay kind of sucks but just think of all the cool government bureaucrats you’ll get to meet, not to mention your customers, who are sure to be in great spirits as they come down to sign up for their whopping $200 a week benefits. If you need a second job to help pay the bills you can always get a weekend job holding up the going out of business signs out in front of the shopping centers, right now when I drive by you’ve got the Circuit City sign on one corner and the Linens and Things sign on the other. Surely more will follow, so the opportunities are endless, and think of all the fresh air you’ll get, minus the car exhaust of course.

Speaking of exhaust, I heard another piece earlier in the week on a new company that is marketing scents of your alma mater. That’s right, you can now relive the college days with a new cologne or perfume, some of the loftier ones were from the overpriced and overrated east coast schools, the people interviewed were asked what the smell of their college days should be and many suggested the pine forest, or the smell of books in the library, nice high and mighty responses you would expect from someone who graduated from Vassar or some such institution. My first thought when they interviewed the recent college grads is you’d better get used to the smell of the unemployment line, I’d hate to be a recent college grad right now, especially those who were duped into going to an elite private school and likely have a six figure debt to retire and bleak prospects for doing so. But my main thought is that if they were to concoct a scent of my alma mater, Arizona State, it would have to be a mix between stale beer, dirty bong water, and leftover pizza, with a splash of coffee and b.o. thrown in for good measure, the kind of b.o. that only a South Asian or Middle Eastern engineering student can produce, there is really no scent like it.

Since we’re on the subject of things that are at least modestly repulsive, how about adults holding hands in public and showing displays of affection. I’m sitting in my usual spot in the coffee house the other morning in my comfy chair, and this couple in their late 40’s comes in and sits down together, literally. They sit in the same chair, her on his lap basically, had some smarmy conversation and then got up to leave eventually, hand in hand. They even had to switch hands as they turned to walk out the door, but they didn’t miss a beat. Anyone over the age of 16 who still holds hands in public and feels the need to kiss and hug and rub down his companion really needs a swift kick in the arse as far as I’m concerned. Then he should be sent home to his wife, because you know when people show that much affection in public it’s either a second wife or a mistress situation, not to be overly cynical here, I‘m just sayin'.

How about the Big 3 CEO’s and their latest road trip? How inspiring that they eschewed their private jets for a drive in their hybrid SUV’s, which probably get less gas mileage than most regular cars by the way, but hey, these guys get it now right? They are driving hybrids and offering to work for a dollar a year, oh hell, how much do you boys need and where do we sign the check? I’m thinking of some other people who I’d like to see take the dollar a year pay plan, all the lawyers and consultants and brokers and hedge fund managers, whatever the heck that means, who feed off the work of others and add unnecessary layers and costs to our economy. Anyone who actually has an office, corner or otherwise, while the rest of the plebeians sit in cubicles, they should go to the dollar a year plan, which would take care of management at all levels, which adds layers of unnecessary rules and regulations while sucking the oxygen out of otherwise productive companies. If you sell useless widgets you get a new comp plan, hit your quota and get your dollar. We’ll still keep the free coffee available, but only for those of you who get the deal done, because as we all learned from Glengarry Glenross, coffee is for closers. What to do with all the money we save, well we can give the working man and woman, you know, the ones who actually make the economic engine hum, we can give them the cost of living raise they’ve been waiting patiently for over the last couple decades.

Or we could spend it on the next presidential election, which in case you forgot to pay attention has officially been going on for a month now, since November 5. And you thought Sarah Palin’s voice was just a bad dream that would be forgotten by the time the holidays rolled around. News item this morning is that Obama himself raised nearly a billion dollars. You can hear Robin Leach’s voice if you listen, a billion dollahs! You all know I love Obama, and I’m glad that he was able to use that money to get elected and rescue us from four more years of being ruled by the kids who, well let’s say weren’t necessarily the smartest ones in the class. But what could we have done as a society if everyone had decided to donate that billion dollars instead to say, education, or infrastructure, or maybe a pay raise to our soldiers who are getting shot at in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just a thought.

A few last items before I close the cage door for now. We all remember how when E.F. Hutton talked, everyone listened. Well what about when Bush and Rice talk? Does anyone even hear the words that are coming out of their mouths anymore? Why do they even bother? Bush should just go back to his ranch and spend the last few weeks of his historically inept run of power roping steer or mending wooden fences, or whatever the heck you do on a ranch. Really Mr. President, just take the last few weeks off to get a head start on your retirement, I don’t think any of us will mind. And Rice should take one of her fact finding missions overseas and just stay there. Go visit some art museums, see some foreign films, and come back home sometime in late January. As for Cheney, he can go lame duck hunting, and maybe he’ll pull a Plaxico Burress and have an accidental shooting, nothing serious mind you, just a little surface wound to put him on the shelf for a few weeks. Maybe that would be what Rumsfeld had in mind when he talked about high value targets.

And lastly, what’s up with the Buddhists? It just occurred to me the other day while thinking about the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay, that we have Muslims killing Hindus, Muslims killing Jews, Muslims killing Christians, (dang those pesky Muslims, good thing Islam is such a peaceful religion, otherwise we’d really see some fireworks) and of course Christians have a pretty strong record of killing Jews throughout history, even though the in vogue thing nowadays for fundamentalists is to claim that the Jews are their new best buddies. See what the Muslims have done, they kill so many damn people they’ve even got Christians and Jews reconciling. But the Buddhists are nowhere to be found. Don’t they know that’s no way to run an organized religion, or a superpower nation for that matter? How can you be great if you don’t control and kill people. Conservatives like to use the line about how we’ll end up like France, so I’m thinking a new one could be something along the lines of, what, you don’t support war and violence and intolerance, what are you a Buddhist or something?

Well that’s about all I’ve got, save for one last item I just came across this morning. It seems a recent study shows that happiness is contagious, that people that know happy people are more likely to be happy themselves. Although one curious finding was that the happiness of someone’s neighbor had a bigger impact than the happiness of a spouse, which makes me wonder what’s going on over at the neighbor’s house, but that’s a subject for another time. For now, let me be the one to pass it on, and wishing all of you a happy and relaxing weekend, although if your husband is over doing yard work at the neighbor’s again, you wives out there might just want to check things out. I’m just sayin’.