Monday, February 18, 2019

Observing

 Happy Presidents day! What are you planning on buying? You have to grab those sales while they're hot you know. Makes no difference if you actually need the item or not, it's a celebration! Hey Lincoln walked a mile to return a penny to a customer, the least you can do is spend one. Washington chopped down a cherry tree, but I don't think that had anything to do with saving money. Well, whatever the case, Happy Presidents day.
 I wrote about this holiday a few days back. It is really nothing more than a paid day off. I'm not complaining, just observing. Observing, get it? It does seem like there is always a sale of some kind taking place in conjunction with our holidays. It makes no difference if it is a national holiday or not, as long as it is a day. I'm thinking days like ground hog day, Valentines day, or St. Patrick's day. We are celebrating something, anything. I noticed that we have created two more unofficial holidays in the last fifteen years or so. Black Friday and cyber Monday. Both of these holidays are dedicated to spending money. We present them as opportunities to save big! That's right, we have made progress. We have figured out how to save money by spending it. Is it any wonder the national debt is counted in trillions. That's trillions, with a T. Soon we should spend our way out of debt. That appears to be the plan anyway. At least one political party in the U.S. thinks that will work.
 Next up on the holiday parade is Easter. They'll be plenty of sales associated with that. Clothes and candy will be highlighted. Oh, they'll be solar powered lights, grave blankets and other religious symbols offered for sale. but the real money is in the Easter Bunny. I'm not sure how much longer this holiday will survive with these millennials. Telling your children that a rabbit delivers eggs, the vegans aren't happy about that, and giving them chocolates, tofu is a better choice, isn't going over well. The religious aspect to this holiday is being rejected by many. Still, the sales will survive all of that. There will always be Peeps! They are gluten and fat free! We can overlook the sugar for one day. Peeps have migrated to every holiday, like shape shifters, you can just never tell where they will appear next. I still prefer the traditional yellow chick, a little stale please. Perhaps there will one day be a national peeps day. A day to celebrate!
 We do live in a consumer driven world. Many have come to believe that you can indeed buy happiness. All you need is good credit. The push now is to get that happiness, for free. If I can't afford to buy it, for any reason at all, you should provide it to me. It's the humanitarian thing to do. I read a short article yesterday that showed me how pervasive this thinking has become. The article concerned people that were getting their cell phones provided through the Obama phone program. Really that program was started by Reagan and subsequently expanded but that's another story. Anyway, these folks that have these phones were complaining that their " apps " weren't good enough and required too much data to operate. The general consensus among those folks was they were being oppressed! Being " poor " they couldn't afford the latest smartphones and unlimited data plans. That was contributing to their plight. How are they supposed to get a job without a smart phone and the latest apps? They should be provided with those things so they can enter the workforce as productive citizens. They are disadvantaged. Yes, that is what the crux of the article concerned. It was an opinion piece in the New York Times. As an amusement I left a comment suggesting you could indeed get a job without having a smart phone and the latest apps. The backlash was immediate and vicious.  I could only shake my head and laugh. Had to laugh to keep from exploding into a rant. I tempered my remarks and the responses I got were fascinating. Did you know you couldn't find your way to work without google maps. After a short while I wandered off. I guess I was what they call a Troll these days. It was an amusement. Those folks are sure easy to rile up. One of them claimed she had a PhD. in astronomy. She said you can't navigate by the stars anymore because of light contamination. What that had to do with a cell phone app escaped me. I asked her if she had ever heard of a compass. They work even in the light and with a flashlight in the dark too, no batteries required. Didn't hear anymore from the Dr.
 Well Happy Presidents day, buy something, the sale is for a limited time. Better hurry. Be safe out there folks.

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