I think everything is stupid

$2/day and you can live like this

Every once in a while you’ll hear some harpie on the news going on about how some poor souls in some faraway Third-World country only earn $100 a month.  We’re supposed to feel sorry for these people, because poor people here in the US make a whopping $1,500 so we’re so much better off.

And oh, aren’t the US corporations so evil!  They make so much money by making their sneakers in Bangladesh or Manila or Bangkok, so you can buy them for $20 here.  They pay these poor sods $50 per month to glue the soles of your shoes together, so you can wear them to your $2,000 per month job.  Boy, they sure have it rough!

Yeah, well that’s bullshit.  It doesn’t make sense to compare US dollars to other currencies like this because in foreign countries you can buy so much more with the same amount of money.  If the pundits had some basic math skills and a rudimentary understanding of the world, they’d realize that earning $100/month in some countries is pretty damn good.  If you can buy a meal for 25 cents, $100 will stretch pretty damn far.  You can get a beer for 50 cents, hookers and coke for $10, and for $500/month you can take a treasure bath every night.  In the Philippines if you make $1,000 a month you can afford a personal chef, a chauffeur, and someone to wipe your pasty, decadent ass.  I’d make shoes until the cows came home if it meant I could live like that.

So news hags, please stop trying to tap into Americans’ need to feel 1) better off than everyone else and 2) guilty about being better off than everyone else.  Poor people in the US often have a worse standard of living than people making $500/mo in the Philippines - it turns out those big, evil US corporations actually pay decent wages most of the time even if — in absolute dollars — it’s less than US wages.

So shut up, and by the way, you’re stupid.

The steroid problem is out of control.

Imagine you bought tickets to an MLB baseball game, but when you got to the stadium, the players decided to take the day off and hit the strip clubs.  What would happen?  That’s right: nothing.  You’d still go in the stadium, still buy your $12 hot dog and your $16 beer, and you’d still get sloshed while your friends place bets on who can hawk the biggest loogie onto the field.

When you go to watch a baseball game, does it matter who wins the game?  Of course not: there are 162 fucking games in the season.  If your team loses a game, that’s okay - they have 161 games to make it up.  If your team loses 82 games in a year (an entire NBA season), they may still make the playoffs.  Last season the Dodgers racked up 78 losses (48% of their games) and clinched their division.  Way to go, guys!  Be proud, Los Angeles.

So how is it that fans go to the games day in and day out just to watch one essentially meaningless game after another?  The answer is that they just don’t give a damn who wins.  People don’t go to baseball games to watch baseball.  They go to hang out, talk to their friends, gossip about which players are on horse tranquilizers this week, and drink away the pressures of the workday, the family, the SEC, or their mothers-in-law.

So stop pretending this is a real sport, guys.  MLB has turned into the new WWE - the fans are drunk, the players are all on steroids, and no one cares who wins.

If these tranquilizers are good enough for a horse, they're good enough for me

Is that Barry Bonds or Serena Williams?

Let’s first point out that, while alcohol is often complicit in the creation of new life, it has never been accused it of making people live longer. Alcohol is a toxin, a really fun toxin, but still the kind of toxin that’s bad for you. It forces flimsy decisions, destroys your liver, eats away your brain and kills kids with cars. Yet, despite all this, people across cultures offer up sloppy cheers to, “Good health” with glasses, bottles, plastic cups and steins full of the shit (god steins are cool. I’d go buy one right now if I was sober enough). This seems as irrational as cheersing to peace with a bunch of sticks of C4. Now, I am not an advocate of the dry lifestyle, I’m just saying let’s not ask too much of the booze. We can ask it for courage, entertainment, temporary attractiveness, rides down hills in shopping carts, and bonding with every glass clink, but physical preservation is outside its realm of expertise. Cheersing to health is asinine, instead cheers to “Increased odds of sex” or “Honesty” or  “Reconnecting with your father in his new trailer after years of not seeing each other because of the bad divorce.” That’s all I’m asking.

Cheers to being fat, guys!