Quit moaning, yacht boy

Some people can have all the money and success in the world and still can’t quit moaning. I humbly suggest that they stop.

A moneyed idiot named Tom Perkins wrote a letter to the Washington Post warning that there would someday be a “progressive Kristallnacht” against the wealthy people in this country. He sees “a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent.” What is one of the examples Perkins cites as evidence of the coming pogrom against the yacht set? The San Francisco Chronicle apparently attacked Danielle Steel as a “snob.”

A chill just went up my spine. Calling a popular author a mild insult? I can hear the jackboots in the distance.

Millions of dollars apparently cannot buy basic reasoning skills or tact. First off, comparing anything aside from literal genocide to the Nazis should get you banned from debate club. It’s a lazy, juvenile way to argue your point.

Second, using the proposed analogy, does Perkins really think a fascist government will imprison the wealthy in concentration camps? Does he really think there will come a night when people riot in the streets and throw bricks through the windows of any mansions or successful companies, killing dozens, as happened on Kristallnacht? If someone actually came to imprison Perkins, he could just sail away to the Cayman Islands or somewhere on his $130 million yacht, a luxury that the victims of the actual Holocaust did not have.

I don’t resent people for being rich and successful. What I do resent, and what I’m sure other people resent, are those who are rich and successful and still can’t stop complaining and playing the victim and reveling in naked greed and just generally being obnoxious about how rich they are.

So you get people who complain about the threat of paying slightly higher marginal tax rates when they’re so rich that they wouldn’t even feel it. They wouldn’t even feel it! Perkins demonstrated this himself when he bragged that the watch he was wearing was worth “a six pack of Rolexes.” Someone who would do that does not get to complain about persecution because he has just flaunted his power. By definition, the powerful cannot be bullied by the less powerful. At least people with old money know how to handle their wealth with discretion and tact.

I don’t want to see rich people rounded up or killed. What I do wish is that people of every income level would be grateful with what we have and show some compassion to people below us on the economic totem pole rather than looking around in envy to see if someone else might be getting a bigger piece of cake than we are.

The State of the Awkwardly Silent Union

The State of the Union would last seven minutes if people didn’t applaud every third word the president said. The pep rally gets old after awhile. Just to mix things up, one of these years, the president should only say things that would get confused or shocked silence from 535 people. Here’s what our chief executive might consider saying, just to get a rise out of people and save time:

“Um … the state of our union is, I guess, strong?”

“I urge Congress to revoke the Third Amendment. From now on, people are just going to have to drag out the air mattress and quarter our soldiers.”

“It’s a disgrace that women only make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. This gap should be even wider.”

“I am reducing the number of Supreme Court justices to two.”

“People in the lower middle class are just making too much money. Let’s lower the minimum wage to $3.16 an hour.”

“You know what? I’m tired of the debate over marriage equality. Since you people can’t agree, nobody gets marriage. I hereby declare all currently married couples, gay or straight, divorced.”

“Tonight I say to Congress: You people are the worst.”

“I believe our kids oughta all have book learnin’ with the readin’ and writin’ and such.”

“The military. Just … the military.”

“Please turn your gaze to the balcony and our special guest, renowned humanitarian and Holocaust expert, the genius with the heart of gold, Tom Perkins.”

“Abortions for some. Miniature American flags for others.”

“In the immortal words of the tax code Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 98–21, §124(a), amended subsec. (a) ‘generally, substituting a table for former pars. (1) to (7) which had imposed a tax on the self-employment income of every individual (1) in the case of any taxable year beginning before Jan. 1, 1978, to be equal to 7.0 percent of the amount of the self-employment income for such taxable year; (2) in the case of any taxable year beginning after Dec. 31, 1977, and before Jan. 1, 1979, to be equal to 7.10 percent of the amount of the self-employment income for such taxable year; (3) in the case of any taxable year beginning after Dec. 31, 1978, and before Jan. 1, 1981, to be equal to 7.05 percent of the amount of the self-employment income for such taxable year; (4) in the case of any taxable year beginning after Dec. 31, 1980, and before Jan. 1, 1982, to be equal to 8.00 percent of the amount of the self-employment income for such taxable year; (5) in the case of any taxable year beginning after Dec. 31, 1981, and before Jan. 1, 1985, to be equal to 8.05 percent of the amount of the self-employment income for such taxable year; (6) in the case of any taxable year beginning after Dec. 31, 1984, and before Jan. 1, 1990, to be equal to 8.55 percent of the amount of the self-employment income for such taxable year; and (7) in the case of any taxable year beginning after Dec. 31, 1989, to be equal to 9.30 percent of the amount of the self-employment income for such taxable year.’”

“I hereby declare war on the United Kingdom.”

I won the lottery

But don’t get too excited or prepare to suck up to me because it was $10 on a scratch-off ticket. Hey, it’s $10 more than I had.

For me, this counts as a big win because I never, ever win anything. I am a very low roller. Some people say “You can’t win if you don’t play” but I say “You can’t lose either.” If my life were like 401K, I would always choose the “low risk, low return” plan. Lottery players often fantasize about what they’ll do with their winnings. I haven’t made any decisions yet but here are some possibilities of what I could do with Mr. Hamilton’s denomination:

One-third of a tank of gas

A matinee movie ticket

0.00056 shares of Facebook

A roll of stamps

Takeout from Seasons

Ten boxes of Rice-a-Roni

Ear wax remover as seen on TV

Down payment on a $25 gift card to Best Buy

Three Sunday newspapers

Ten deep album cuts from SWV

Two Hallmark cards with ribbons on the spine and a piece of tissue paper inside and wrapped in plastic

0.000000000000000001274 ounces of gold

Two tickets to a Starship concert

More lottery tickets

Regardless of how I choose to spend my windfall, I promise not to spend it all in one place.

Running Around in a Red Panic

This snowstorm, in addition to being completely terrifying, is also going to be a major setback in terms of me finishing my Valentine’s Day shopping.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say. “You shouldn’t have waited so long to start, Brian. If you’d been smart, you would have started on Dec. 26 when all the supermarkets took down their Christmas displays to put up the Valentine’s Day chocolates and cards.”

You’re absolutely right. Now one of the biggest holidays of the year is only 25 days or so away and there’s a huge blizzard that’s going to paralyze everything and I’m going to end up as one of those fools who is running around in a red panic like a chicken with its head cut off on Feb. 13 while the smart shoppers already have everything wrapped and ready to go and can just huddle under blankets and enjoy a nice cup of hot chocolate. If I were smarter, I would have taken the full seven weeks to complete my purchases.

Like most other people, I have a massive shopping list for Valentine’s Day. Since we’re newlyweds, I would like to do something special for my new husband so this year, I have an expanded card budget to buy an assortment of cards to express every aspect of love. I am also scouring stores to buy dark chocolate in every possible percentage. Then there are all the other people for whom I need to shop.   

And now I am probably going to be stuck inside for a few days because of this snow and I won’t be able to get out to finish my shopping. Yeah, there’s online shopping — if all the servers in the country don’t lose power in the blizzards. There’s been so much snow over Valentine’s Day shopping season that I’ve barely been able to leave the house to buy food, let alone the scores of red hearts I need.

Well, I just hope I can stop trembling long enough to grip the steering wheel and drive home. I may just get a hotel for the week. I remember, 15 or 20 years ago, I had a bad experience driving in the snow. I slid a little going down a hill. And even though I didn’t hit anything, when you experience that kind of terror, it forms a scar on you that never really heals …

Godspeed, everyone. See you on the other side.

Another Condescending Spelling Lesson

Lightning ≠ lightening

Bath ≠ bathe

Lose ≠ loose

Rational ≠ rationale

Breath ≠ breathe

Regime ≠ regimen

Later ≠ latter

Formally ≠ formerly

Principal ≠ principle

Stationery ≠ stationary

Woman ≠ women

Led ≠ lead

Then ≠ than

Past ≠ passed

And do I even need to say it?

Your ≠ you’re

To ≠ too ≠ two

Their ≠ there ≠ they’re

Its ≠ it’s

Apropos of Nothing

David’s Bridal is airing a really depressing commercial. The groom is saying how the wedding is all about the bride and he’s just a cog in the machine. True, the attention is on the bride at the wedding but the blunt way this commercial states that is just so pathetic and sad. (If you want to get technical, it’s also inaccurate since the groom is one of two people who needs to show up or there’s no wedding or marriage.) It’s an ineffective commercial since I didn’t focus on the dresses they’re trying to move but focused on how low this hypothetical person’s self-image must be. The commercial ironically draws more attention to the groom than the bride.

Can we not get through a single weather event without it turning into a three-act melodrama? This morning Action News had “continuing coverage of the fog” (I guess for the benefit of all the blind drivers who can’t just look out the window and see the fog). Do people really need instructions on how to handle excess water vapor?

I have a nomination for a Phillies broadcaster to replace Wheels and Sarge: Charlie Manuel. Hear me out: He doesn’t need to be in the booth for the whole game and doesn’t even need to comment on the game at hand. Just bring him in for a few innings and have him bullshit about baseball and tell stories with the current game on in the background. It would be enormously entertaining.

Someone should market Hate Pink sweatpants for people like me. I hate the color pink. I’ll double my contribution to breast cancer charities if it will get me out of wearing a Pepto-Bismol ensemble. If pink is your color, fine, but there’s no way I’ll ever look good in it. Pink isn’t even a real color. It’s just a lighter shade of red. Pink is the gray of red.

Football announcers should start calling completions “intraceptions” just to see how confused people get at home.

Around 1980, there was a backlash against disco. Some people were sick of the genre but what alternative did they offer? REO Speedwagon, Christopher Cross and Air Supply. For that dreck, people told Donna Summer to take a hike. Compare the charts of 1978-79 with 1980-81 and tell me what music you’d rather hear at a party.

I tried a new brand of soup, Brandywine something or other, comes in a jar, and never will again. The mushroom soup tasted like mushrooms in dirty water from the Brandywine. It was foul.

The gym is not a place for you to chat with your friend at 3 mph on the treadmill. You can saunter around the block and do that for free without taking up a machine. No matter how loud I turn up my music, I can still hear you blabbing away. Most of these people will quit soon but I’d rather they stop kidding themselves and quit now so I can run in peace.

A Bridge Too Far

(Yeah, yeah, it’s an obvious headline. Sorry.) I am highly entertained by the Chris Christie bridge scandal. It’s a fun scandal that this country needs. It’s fun in the sense that it didn’t involve anything too serious; this wasn’t a war crime or anything like that.

As trivial as it seems on the surface, don’t mess with people’s commutes. I would have been livid if I’d been sitting in traffic for four days for no discernable reason. I’m already livid now when I’m late for work because of a dusting of snow or because traffic cones are out while there is no work going on or because of general driver incompetence. I can’t imagine how annoyed I’d be if the delay were due to political shenanigans.

Gov. Christie may very well not have known about the bridge lane closing but I wonder if it happened because of the culture he fostered in his own office. It struck me that the aide emailed “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” and the other aide immediately responded “Got it.” There was no discussion of what it meant, which suggests that there were some kind of standing orders in the governor’s office to act this way. In that scenario, Christie wouldn’t have had to order the lanes closed. The aides would still have been acting in the spirit of his administration.

I don’t buy that people thought it was just a traffic study in Fort Lee. Wouldn’t a traffic engineer want to observe traffic under normal conditions, rather than with several lanes closed and drivers gridlocked?

I accept that politicians do all sorts of underhanded things to win elections but if the allegations are true, closing the bridge lanes didn’t gain Christie anything. If the allegations are true, this was just a petty act of vindictiveness.

Someone online commented that the best political scandals confirm what people already thought about politicians. Nixon was a creep even before Watergate. Clinton was a whore before Monica Lewinski. Christie was a bully before closing a bridge. He has only himself to blame for cultivating the image of a bully. If you want to govern by yelling at teachers and playing tough guy on the boardwalk and implying that a woman speaking at a meeting is a slut, you can’t turn around when people accuse you of being a bully and say, “Moi?”

Anyway, this isn’t the worst thing that ever happened in a political scandal but it is fun watching how it will impact Christie’s career.

Tips for Surviving the Polar Vortex

Wow, the weather, amiright? Now that the Polar Vortex has descended upon us all, I’m offering the following tips to those who want to beat the cold, especially those who don’t know what they’re doing.

• If you must go outside today, wear a shirt.
• Start your car ahead of time to warm it up but don’t do this with the garage door closed. Those fumes really are not good for you.
• If you work outside, quit.
• Don’t stick your tongue to a pole, no matter who triple dog dares you.
• Wear layers. It’s better to wear three two-inch thick coats than one six-inch thick coat.
• Turn to local news. If there’s one thing they’re good at, it’s filling a half hour with various ways of saying, “It’s cold out.”
• If you’re unsure of how to complain about the cold, just do the opposite of what you do when you bitch about the heat all summer.
• Think about fire.
• Send your kids to school with a baked potato that they can use to warm their hands while they walk uphill to school and back.
• For those who live in San Diego and the other places in this country that escape this cold, please brag about how it’s 70º because we are all so jealous. Oh my God, we want your life. We want it so bad.
• Take solace in the fact that even though it’s 5º, the name Polar Vortex is kind of awesome.  

I had the iciest dream

I dreamed I was in a space that I think was the O’Hara cafeteria (for some reason). There were three cars driving on a frozen over lake that was indoors. I watched as all the cars fell through the ice.

A few of us tried to help rescue the drivers from the ice. We dug through the wooden floor that was beneath the ice (for some reason) and were dropping lassos into the freezing water trying to find some of the people. We didn’t have any luck.

This was horrifying, not only because people died, but because of the way they died. I have a phobia of dying by crashing through the ice into the water. That has to be one of the most unpleasant ways to die. So I would never venture out onto a frozen body of water, no matter how many people assure me it’s frozen solid and six inches thick, for fear or crashing through. Ain’t. No. Way. I will stay on the shore and watch everyone skate, thank you.

I guess the moral of that is I had snow on my mind last night and it got into my dreams.

Lowering the Bar in 2014

Things are hard. Stuff is difficult to do. Accomplishments are annoying. Resolutions are rough. So why make them? This year will be the year I figuratively (and, what the hell, literally) put on sweatpants. I’m lowering the bar in 2014. I’m only going to make resolutions that I know will be really easy to accomplish.

Like a lot of people, I indulged a little too much in chocolate cookies and eggnog and the like this holiday season. Instead of making some doomed resolution to eat healthier, I’m actually vowing to keep right on going. I’m going to the supermarket tonight and everything I buy will be in the processed or frozen foods aisles. I’ll have a Hungry Man microwave dinner and a bag of Chips Ahoy for dessert. All week long, I’ll be ordering Wawa hoagies for lunch at work. Breakfast will be a Pop Tart or two, or maybe leftover takeout. Soda is always on sale so I’ll stock up on Coke by the pallet.

To help my resolution to balloon, I will not set foot in a gym in 2014. I’ll keep paying for Planet Fitness (the wastefulness of which will further my financial goals — see below) but I won’t actually go. No more walking either. I usually walk to close destinations in our neighborhood but now I’m exclusively driving. If one of our neighbors invites us over, I will get in the car, back out of the driveway, pull around front and find a spot. I will probably end up walking more than I did if I could just walk next door but driving more will further my goal of using more gas.

You know what will go perfectly with my resolution to pack on the pounds? Booze. I don’t drink that much but I’m sure as hell going to start. I’m going to go for a bottle before I even get my coat off in the evenings. Some people like to relax with an after dinner drink. I’ll have seven.

As for financial security, who need to work that hard? In 2014, it’s all going out the window. I’ve made strides to manage my debt and pay down the mortgage but it’s much easier to pay only the minimum on my credit cards and take out a few extra home equity loans just for fun. Why worry about interest rates when I can just throw my checkbook in a drawer and laugh a carefree laugh? I’ll also be making more impulse purchases like downloading every new album that comes out regardless of genre, shopping for pants in various lengths in case I grow or shrink, and buying a riding lawnmower and snowplow for our patch of land. It also can’t hurt to make a late payment or two. It’s easier to lower that credit score than raise it so that’s what I’ll be doing.

Culturally, 2014 will be the year I turned off my brain. I got a lot of books this Christmas and while I’m grateful, they’re just going into storage in the basement. How will I have time for literature when there are just so many hours of reality TV? I’ll skip the good reality TV, like the shows you have to have talent to get on, and just watch a ton of Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo and Real Housewives and that show with Kendra Whatever and all the shows where the camera turns on and you just watch people going about their business and copping an attitude whenever the wind shifts.

I will also breathlessly follow the exploits of Kim Kardashian and all her siblings. I can think of no more rewarding way to occupy my year.

Let’s hear it for a really easy 2014!