January 4, 2008 2009
Happy New Year!
It’s a time of review, resolve, and renewal. It’s a time to look back at where we’ve been and decide where we want to go. Resolutions for betterment abound and good intentions fill our hearts with optimism.
And then everyone wakes up that first Monday morning after their holiday vacation, mutters a few choice words about having to go back to that crappy job so early (daggone it’s cold outside!), and we plod right back into our daily dismal drudgery without really doing anything different. At least, that’s how my stepping into the new New Year typically happens. I doubt I’m alone.
But this year we’ve made the usual new resolutions, resolving to write regularly, to work steadily on Civil Servitude, and to even be funny!
We’re also going to exercise regularly, eat more bran and whole grains, swear less, give slightly more effort at work, and pay more attention to those things that truly matter in life, like making more money and buying nicer things to go into that bigger house we’d like to buy this year (which we’ll hopefully swipe for next to nothing at some poor, unfortunate sap’s foreclosure auction!).
Yes, this year we’re ignoring the recession and we’re going to continue spending our way to apparent financial success. Why bother changing now? The damage is already done! So let’s keep celebrating! Another bottle of your finest, my good man. And throw in a couple tins of your best caviar. What the hell, we’re just going to charge it!
You see, obtaining new credit cards is simple for those of us who still have excellent credit. And now is our time! Call it “The Rise of the Fiscally Responsible!” Those of us who have spent the last twelve years living within our means will finally be able to afford to live slightly above our means, thanks to all of you who are bankrupt and renting!
But then the federal government will step in and bail everyone out, rewarding all of those overweight idiots who overate and overspent and overlived, our shining examples of what the American Dream really looks like.
And then the federally managed economic correction will bring everything back to normal, whatever that is. So we better live it up now.
Hopefully most of our regular readers (he knows who he is!) recognized the cynicism virtually dripping in this dispatch. If you didn’t, perhaps it’s time for you to reevaluate your lifestyle. Anna Quindle did this topic extreme justice in her Newsweek article “Why Stuff Is Not Salvation”. I believe it should be on 2009’s required reading list. Click here to read, then discuss amongst yourselves.
There WILL be a test!
There’s a fire sale going on and some of us still have cash to spend!
