July Fourth Special

Here are some holiday suggestions for ways to utilize the summer’s unfolding events and organize your priorities, so far. As you set off your firecrackers and bottle rockets, and 500 G military artillery shells (like we do here in Texas), and grill your steaks and hot dogs, and munch on watermelon, try a few of these observations on for size.

If you have watched the television at all, lately, you have probably noticed advertising for:

-Independent trade schools urging people to go back to school to learn new skills in law enforcement (municipalities have no money to fund these jobs), electrical/construction trades (the housing construction industry has crashed, nationwide), long-haul truck driving and drafting. There are no jobs to be had in these fields, but we are encouraged to take out student loans and go deeper into debt, anyway. And be sure to eat at McDonald’s every day, between classes. Then you can spend what you have left on an expensive weight-loss program. Google Dan Merino.

-Learning to use tools like PC-based stock trading programs to play the stock market or else run right down to the local office of your friendly neighborhood broker, to discuss re-managing your empty portfolio (on July 3, the DOW closed down about 225+ points…again). All we have to play with is monopoly money: we may as well have fun with it. Paper re-cycling bins are full of shredded 401k statements.
-A rash of new extended warranty companies who want to you pay large amounts of money to protect you from financial ruin if your “older” car breaks down. They know you can’t afford a new car, but want you to believe that a monthly payment to them (about the size of a small car payment) will protect you from the financial ruin roughly equal to not having adequate health insurance. If not that, then run out and take advantage of low-cost 60 month financing on a new vehicle that will no longer be manufactured by Genera l Motors. Or get guaranteed payments on a new car from Korea if you lose your job in the next few weeks or months.

-Immediately changing your auto insurance policy from company A to company B, because company A is surely charging you too much and company B has a much better payment plan. The combined monies that Progressive, Geico, State Farm, et.al. are spending on TV ads could finance the war in Iraq. And their rates go up, daily.

So let’s change gears. Before you get caught up in worrying about Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, Honduras, un-health care, North Korea, the imminent crises concerning world food supplies and water or the fact that the Obama presidency has the remarkable look of being the mirror opposite of the Obama campaign, kick around a few of these entertaining activities:

Stay mesmerized by the meaning less and irrelevant death of Michael Jackson. He has does nothing but represent the bizarre, financially irresponsible and macabre and molest children for the last decade or so. Maybe we can spend more time talking about it and maybe you can contribute to the already bankrupt city of Los Angeles to help pay for his “memorial service”. Are we that stupid?

Keep your imagination titillated by speculating on the real reasons behind why Sarah Palin is resigning. This is, in all likelihood, a preemptive strike to get her out of the line of fire before some Inuit Eskimo Exxon baby seal scandal erupts or that we find out that her hubby is not Trig’s father. Or John Ensign is. Or that she got an STD from Mark Sanford in Argentina. Which she can see from her front porch. And she has done nothing but produce and intellectually molest children for the last decade or so, either. Are we that bored? Gullible?

And if you are still without enough diversionary fluff to keep you busy, run on down to Wal-Mart and buy a new HD flat-panel TV(on credit) and jump into the fray about whether or not to get Direct TV, Dish Network or Cable( I receive junk mail from all three of these four out of seven days a week. What tye spend on this marketing could pay my mortgage without batting an eye and they want rate increases) Then you can decide at the same time if you should bundle your telephone land line with the charges that you are about to be hit with by TimeWarner to surf the net and buy more stuff from the Home Shopping Network… or sell your old TV at a profit through ebay (after you buy the computer training program from the guy on TV who says he won’t make you rich but wants your money for some CD training disks). It’s fun. Really.

And don’t forget to take your gun to Church when you go the day after the fireworks and be sure to watch Fox News , so that you can ineffectively discuss DADT and DOMA and Officer Choi. And Michael Jackson is still dead. Really.