All this financial shit makes me wonder if that fat 401k is such a good idea after all. It seemed great when you could load up on tech stocks and make 28% without even trying, but now...holy shit. You realize just how ephemeral all that "retirement savings" really is. It's like this shit I'm writing: virtual shit.
So what are you gonna do when the bottom drops out and your savings are worth shit and nobody has any money and nobody has a job? Our grandparents struggled and got by. They headed West like old Tom Joad, or they wandered like Lennie and George, but they got by. I don't think our generation is capable of that kind of adaptation. I think the government has to fix this, or we'll all just flop like fish on a river-bank. We've lost any concept of self-sufficiency, of consequences. Give up my giant flat-screen TV and my cutting-edge cell phone? My iPhone? Jesus Christ, are you insane? You're talking about necessities; you may as well cut off my legs.
Chicken shit.
My great-Aunt Vinnie was one of those crazy old ladies that make you a little nervous. She was nice enough, but there was a hard edge to her that always made us kids nervous, like maybe she'd just up and come after us with a fillet knife for no good reason. She never did, but we stayed on our toes, just in case. Anyhow, she used to go to McDonald's and steal handfuls of the little ketchup packets. She'd stuff her big old-lady purse full of ketchup and salt and pretty much anything that wasn't nailed down. My mom said that growing up in the Depression had made her frugal, but it was still kinda weird. Eventually McDonald's had the last laugh when they went to those cheap little paper cups that you pump the ketchup into. Kinda hard to stuff that into your big old lady purse.
I wonder if our current hard times are breeding a generation of future condiment-thieves.
3 comments:
I get pissed off when they give that cheap pink sugar substitute in stead of equal. now thats so expensive its worth stealing!
There are two kinds of people; people who are swim in the stream and when the water starts to boil, they stick around, and then there are people who realize what's happening and head out into the woods. I just hope when the bottom drops out, I'm with someone who knows how to hunt...
(Her)
This reminds me of my landlady when I lived in the top floor apartment of the house in Northeast Portland. She lived in San Francisco and made flights to Portland every couple of months to manage her properties. She hired me to do some simple electrical work at some of her buildings and wanted to treat me to dinner at a restaurant of my choosing. Nice, I thought. The lady had character that I always found interesting, but I really didn't know what to think when, before dinner was over, she pulled a hanky out of her purse and wrapped the left over bread from our table in it and stuffed it in her bag. She did this without explaining herself or being one-bit sneaky about it. I was a little nervous from then on out. Much as you were with your aunt. --Patrick
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