MONEY

Seems to be the subject on everyone's minds these days. Despite a massive suicide attack on a Marriott in Pakistan and enough natural disasters to make you think you're trapped in a theater in the 90's, the subject of money is dominating the headlines. Except for the New York Post which has devoted its considerable journalistic talent towards covering a heinous cat murder in Manhattan.

"You don't need money to be happy." Bullshit. People who truly believe that have either too much or too little money to be given any serious consideration. Moreover the common reflexive disassociation of money from happiness also assumes that a positive emotional state is some sort of overriding biological imperative.

As usual, I digress. The point is, for anyone living in a society where they have the ability to read a facebook note written by a jaded failed academic and recovering compulsive gambler, money is an integral part of our lives. We go to school for 18+ years so we can get a job for 30+ years and then hopefully manage to enjoy 15+ years of blissful retirement, the carnival cruise, boca raton type not the clipping coupons to buy cat food for dinner type. So if life is a highway then your body is the car, money is the fuel and you pay for it with your time. The problem is that most people have to fill up 108 octane for about 40 hours a week and then get some piss poor mileage in between all too frequent stops.

You know the economy is bad when I have to make one analogy stretch so damn far. Apparently my comedic material is primarily ethanol based as well.

One of the few positive traits I can attribute to gambling would be a healthy detachment from the unholy reverence that most people place upon money. In other words I have a tendency to spend it as if it was going out of style. This freewheeling attitude towards money was fostered at an early age. I grew up in the poorest branch of a upper/middle or lower/upper income bracket extended family. My uncles had houses and a boat while my mother scraped together quarters to do laundry. I wasn't Oliver Twist by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't exactly champagne, caviar models and bottles the whole way either. The moral of the story is I learned that there was money to be made everywhere yet I didn't have any of it. A normal person would probably develop a strong work ethic at that point and work his fingers to the bone and make something grand for himself one day. But I'm a bit abnormal to say the least.

After trading one summer for a salary as a teenager I realized that the whole dollars for hours deal just wasn't my thing. Everyone said that there's no easy way to get rich quick, but everyone around me seemed to be trying to do just that. Wishing for a windfall while grinding their lives away. I fell prey to that philosophy as well. I somehow got it into my head that I would create an endless revenue stream as a professional gambler. So casually strolling into a billion dollar casino I plunked down stack after stack of increasingly large amounts of chump change. It wasn't long before the only thing chump like about the change was the person carrying it.

Before this turns into a 300 page chronicle of my misadventures, let's summarize. I learned that our society is structured so that very few can profit very handsomely from the endless toiling of the very many. Slavery was never abolished, they just call it salary these days. Whether it's 20k a year or 20 mil a year, as long as you have to trade your time for money, it's slavery. Because so many of us are slaves to money, money is damn important. Money is a fickle and cruel master that offers your greedy little heart ever more wonders while constantly pulling the treasures away leaving a tiny trickle of baubles to give you just enough of a fix to keep plodding along like a good little donkey.

I have just wasted many words to articulate a problem that we all know. In the next note i will offer some solutions or at least a new perspective. Until then think about why you drag yourselves out of bed every morning and why you can't wait for that IV drip of morphine aka direct deposit.