Evil Stick Blog

After two months of silence, I have progress to report - I’ve lost about 8 pounds! From 228 at the start to right around 220 now (217 on a good day). However I’m not certain this is something to be proud of - I haven’t done a pushup in over two months. The loss of my job back in January hit me pretty hard, and when I wasn’t applying to jobs or studying for interviews I just didn’t have the motivation to keep myself in shape. I think the 8 pounds above is some combination of eating less and digesting more due to stress, but I obviously can’t say anything for certain. I was also borderline ill for most of the period, and full-on ill for the last week, so that probably contributed to my lack of motivation.

On the plus side I walked 3.5 miles today. One of the benefits of losing my job is that my new position will require much more walking, which will mean much more exercise for a certain lazy ass I know. I’m not going to name names, but his initials are MYSELF. So hopefully what has resulted over the past two months continues into the future as I get more active. The 3.5 miles was round trip to and from the train station, which will be my primary means of commute going forward. I figure that at least during the warmer months I can walk it, then when it starts to get cold I can switch to a bike with cold weather gear. From tragedy arises opportunity.

“My fellow Americans, if the government doesn’t spend even more money that it doesn’t have, then the people of this great country will not be able to continue spending money that they don’t have.” - paraphrasing of Bush’s speech I found on the web

Some people wonder why I throw my vote away as a Libertarian. The above is an effective summary. Republicans want to take your hard work and give it to the upper class. Democrats want to take your hard work and give it to the lower class. Libertarians don’t want either. At least, in theory - we all know how pulpit and practice differ vastly. Above all, I want to see a smaller government. I don’t think that government should be involved in retirement planning, saving for a rainy day (a la unemployment), health care, or pretty much anything that involves my money going to some government program that benefits the masses.

Of course such a system could not exist under the current legal landscape - health care prices are ridiculous because medical malpractice suits are through the roof (not to mention people gaming the system for maximum usage of benefits, or protection of corporate assets through patents and copyrights sending the price of medicine skyrocketing), the government needs to fund social security simply because it’s still taking money out of our paychecks to cover it (thus imposing an obligation on them to at least cover their current commitment), and revamping the welfare system would most likely cause considerable civil unrest in lower-income areas of the country. However, that does not mean that we have to use these facts as a basis for the continual erosion of personal responsibility. Bailout? Fuck no. Fuck them. Fuck the government. Let the markets crash. Let the banks fail. Sure, it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt a lot. But in the end it’ll be for the better.

Bail out the banks now without sufficient consequences for those who helped to cause the issue, and they’ll just go ahead and do it again in a different way. Bail out the borrowers who didn’t read their mortgage agreements, and they’ll expect the government to solve all of their problems and take responsibility for their poor decisions (never mind how much this happens already). The school of hard knocks is still the best educational institution we have, and we’re long overdue for the start of next semester.

I find it patently offensive, not to mention morally repugnant, that because I chose to not only recognize the housing bubble for what it was, but to also only purchase a house I could safely afford when I finally elected to purchase property, that I now have to help out all the morons who said “Let’s give a mortgage to everyone, then diversify the debt obligation to the market at large,” or “ooh, looky, a big house. I’m an amerricun, i DESERVE a big house! I’ll just sign these papers without reading them closely.”

Yes, I know, the entire economic system is in a certain degree of jeopardy due to the actions of those mentioned above. I also know that if I default on $10,000 dollars it’s my problem, but if I default on $10,000,000,000 it’s society’s problem. Everything’s a complex tapestry - I get it. That does not mean that I’m happy about it, and since I’m kind of a dick I’d be more than happy to sit through the financial shitstorm that would hit us if we did nothing because I DID WHAT WAS RIGHT. People need to be smacked good and hard in the pocket book before they start to take notice. Bail ‘em out and they’ll just do it again. Let millions eat ramen for a while, let every investment bank crash and burn. Whatever emerges from the ashes will be a damn sight better than what we have now, and hopefully tempered with a bit of real-world pain and loss the American people will wise up to their lifestyles and learn how to save again.

The days of “Spend as much as you can to save the economy” are over. Most Americans are leveraged so heavily that even one extra bill will throw their finances all out of wack. I read somewhere that your average American carries $5,000 in credit card debt. This cannot continue forever. After a certain point we should only spend what we can afford to spend. Credit cards are not a form of income augmentation, they are ways of either solving an emergency problem with funds you have (but can’t procure at the moment) or of admitting failure as you buy something you just can’t afford.

My generation’s been taught to spend without consequence. Don’t question, just consume. Credit cards are endemic to our society - the newest version of the Monopoly board game ships with fake credit cards and a reader which have replaced the traditional paper money. Some may say that this is a sign of changing times, and that electronic currency is more prevalent nowadays. I say that Parker Brothers is doing a disservice to the youth of the world. By moving away from paper money, they are taking away one of the strengths of the game of monopoly - that you need to always keep in mind how much money you have available. Swiping a plastic card reduces the import of the purchase experience - you’re no longer paying out your hard-earned funds for a chance to procure an asset or utilize a service, you’re now transferring numbers about to get you what you want.

Maybe I’m just taking the mindset a little too far, but from my perspective the shift from a cash and check-based method of currency exchange to one where the swiping of cards can result in a usurous Non-Sufficient Funds “loan” represents a further erosion of the responsibility of the consumer. If I run out of cash in my wallet, I can’t buy anything else. If I use a debit card, it hits my account but my bank will still allow me to go over-balance (and charge me $30 for the pleasure). If I use a credit card, I delay the pain I feel from my purchases. By doing so I dissociate the purchase of a gigantic television from the financial pain I feel six months down the road as a result of buying something so ludicrously expensive. “Man, this expensive-ass TV is killing my funds” becomes “Man, this credit card bill is through the roof!”

Ugh. No more to say on this. Rant mode over - on to other stuff
Did week 2 day 2 of the pushups program today - got up to 30, so yay for me! If anyone wants to follow my progress in real-time, check out http://www.pushupslogger.com/plog/show_user?user_id=35 . Also did day 2 of running yesterday. I’ve been playing drum corps while I run to give me something to focus on and to motivate me. It tends to make the workouts seem like they take less time. Yesterday was easier than the first day, I think, but I definitely still have a long way to go. That, and I’m 97.3% certain that I need new running shoes. I plan on obtaining a pair as a reward for completing week 2. In the meantime, I’ll just kinda deal with the issues as they arise - I did two seasons of drum corps in these shoes, I think they’ll last another 9 days.