Curiously Strong Paychecks

Clearly there at a lot of people being over-paid.

If you have the time and money to turn an iPod Shuffle into an Altoids can you're obviously valued more than you're worth. This specific case may be an exception as the person labels it as a "dead" shuffle. But nonetheless, that's at the very best a $70 Altoids container.

Do you know one of those types of people? You know the kind. The people that have two of everything that Apple makes the day they're released, a half-dozen PCs through-out their house, a couple TiVo and Netflicks accounts, Satellite, HDTV, and complains that the HiDef 60" Plasma in their recroom is better than the two they have in their basement?

They're easy to find. They're in your tech department at work or most likely every VP or Marketing Dept. Head. The real-estate guy you see advertised on bus-shelters? Yeah, he's one of them. The jackass who parked his Jetta over three spaces? Yup, him too.

Most notably is anyone who is, or knows, Kevin Rose.
If you've been in the same room as that guy, you now have all of the products listed above. If your voice has been heard on the podcast "TWiT", you have double that amount.

What I hate most about these types of people is their lack of knowledge of what it's like to work for the money. Now, I'm sure they work relatively hard for the things they horde. But at this point, they don't need to work. They could easily stop working for the next decade and live more comfortably than the rest of us. Well, there'd be one caveat: they'd no longer get to buy new shit each week.

That daily iPod purchase and the new car for the months ending in "R" would have to come to a stop. They'd have to live like the rest of us screw-ups: one DVD player at a time.

I don't begrudge them their winnings. I know I'd conspicuously consume with the best of them if I had that mad dotcom money. But I have neither the marketing talents nor lack of morals to jump into that clusterfunk.

Treat yourself. Some Saturday pretend you're one of these cash-sponge monkeys and take a trip to the local BestBuy. Walk to a salesperson and command his/her attention. Wave your hand across the sales-room floor in a grand gesture and in a booming voice say to the nice clerk, "I'll take it! Every god-damned piece of it."

Yes, every fucking piece of it.

Tim Horton's AntiVirus

There's a guy in Quebec who's trying to get the Tim Horton's Roll-Up-The-Rim prize on a cup he threw out in a school. They're going to use DNA TESTING TO DETERMINE THE OWNER! So not only are the two families of the little kids fighting over the prize, but some un-named jerk is jumping onto the pile claiming it's his.

Seriously, if you want the prize, check it BEFORE you throw it out. Not AFTER it's been found and claimed. There are no gimmies, do-overs, mulligans, or dry-runs in life. This is a life lesson: don't throw out Tim Horton's cups. Horde them! Guard them jealously for all of eternity. Keep every one you ever touch! Or, at the very least, throw it in your own trash. That way until it hits the curb it technically still is yours.

And how come no one goes to court over the free donuts? They're better than a RAV4 and result in fewer taxes. And at the very least (again) you can lick the donut and call dibs.

I'm done.

Canard Conspiracy

This bird flu thing? It's a conspiracy. It's true.
But not from the standard conspiracists this time.

Now it's even much more KFC than JFK.
Yup, it's the birds. Birds are conspiring against us. Well, not us.
Not yet. Right now it's the first line of offense to birds: Felines
and Foreigners. And they're attacking both of them!

Both felines and foreigners have been known to attack, kill, and hang
in windows all kids of birds since the beginning of time. The birds
have done nothing to provoke this attack other than simply having
feathers and sporting the ability to fly. Oh, and that dangerous beak.

So this whole bird-flu is their way of getting back at us and 'them"
for all the horrible treatment they've been getting all these years.

The dodo, the chicken-crossing-street jokes, "bird-brain", and
penned-in hunting has caught up with us. We're going to pay for our
terra-firma-centric lifestyles. The chicken has come home to roost; in
the closest comparison to literality since we devised that clever
saying.

Look to the skies, my friends.
For we may truly have egg on our face.