Free funeral for drunk drivers!

A Georgia mortuary offered a free burial to any one who drinks, drives, and dies. The would-be corpse had to sign a contract (by noon today) saying they intended to use drugs and/or drink and then drive on New Year’s Eve, and if they die in a car wreck tonight, it’s on the house.

And thanks, Bro. Jay — who is the soul of abstinence — for the link.

How are you celebrating tonight’s blue moon?

Oh, and New Year’s Eve, as well?

And will you even be able to see the blue moon, which won’t really be blue, from where you are?

Killing ideas is far more difficult than killing people

The Underwear Bomber, by Bernd Debusmann, at Reuters.

Biting bankers who give loans

We just today went to see a house we both like, a house I think will move us to make an offer, a house I could see myself living in.

So we’re in the process, as they say, and to move things along we got pre-approved for a mortgage. It’s been a while since I’ve done this and it’s been a while since I saw my credit report, but I’m sitting here with 11 pages in my lap of former loans, loans retired, loans still open, credit cards cut up in frustration, and loans for cars that have long since taken their last gasp on the junk heap. It is my financial history, by the numbers.

My credit score won’t keep me from buying a house, but as I thumb through the pages, I am reminded that this is basically all crap. It doesn’t begin to cover the pain and anguish of these loans. It is strictly a (flawed) indication to future loan officers whether they will ever see a dime from me.

And it’s an inaccurate picture, as well. I can remember being on the phone multiple times with then-Bank of Boston, soon to be BankBoston, soon to be Fleet Bank, soon to be Bank of America, which was my bank until I showed myself to be a psychic about eight years ago, and took Arianna Huffington’s advice before she even offered it, and moved my money to a smaller, regional bank where the tellers know my name.

Meanwhile, at Bank of Boston, a woman on the other end of my multiple phone calls kept confusing me with That Other DJ, the one who couldn’t pay her mortgage on time. Our names were the same (Ms. DJ) but I can’t imagine our social security numbers were, yet there I’d be, every month, getting a late notice weeks after I’d sent my mortgage check in, on time. I kept getting Kathy (with a K, I know because I asked) who had that special mix of condescension with a frisson of superiority that flips my switch every time. Bless her heart.

Until the last move, I kept a file (under “Annoyances”) of the letters that went back and forth until her bank was finally sold. We moved on to BankBoston (if pressed I bet I can almost remember the logo for that short-lived venture) where a nice man offered to wipe the slate clean — which he evidently did, from the pages before me now.

And now that I have become attractive to lending institutions (good paycheck, good credit, and my hair is perfect), I don’t like them and I feel icky that they like me. I suppose it would be counter-productive to flip ‘em the bird (I need a loan in order to buy a house because I had the bad luck of being switched at the hospital and given to a hillbilly family rather than the fabulously wealthy family I’m pretty sure I actually belong to). But I very much want to. I don’t think I’ve seen a document lately that has annoyed me more.

Get rich NOW!

 

It’s all in how you measure “rich,” says Amitai Etzioni, linked here at Utne Reader:

Several studies have shown that, across many nations with annual per capita incomes above $20,000, there is no correlation between increased income and increased happiness. In the United States since World War II, per capita income has tripled, but levels of life satisfaction remain about the same, while the people of Japan, despite experiencing a sixfold increase in income since 1958, have seen their levels of contentment stay largely stagnant. Studies also indicate that many members of capitalist societies feel unsatisfied, if not outright deprived, however much they earn and consume, because others make and spend even more.

Things you can still do on a plane

My favorite? Barf Bag Puppet Theater!

Where’d the hope go?

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll says just 69 percent of Americans are hopeful about their future. And just 51 percent are hopeful about the world.

That’s quite a bit less hopeful than 10 years ago.

Today’s Kwanzaa principle

Kuumba. Creativity.

For more on the holiday, go here.

“Since 9/11, we’ve embraced our inner coward”

Writes Ted Rall, at Common Dreams:

I watched a legless vet, humiliated and detained by a TSA agent as he repeatedly explained why the metal detector kept going off: his body was full of titanium, courtesy of the Iraqi insurgency. I watched. So did other passengers. We said nothing.     

We were afraid.     

Not just at the airport. We were afraid at work. Unions were deader than dead, the government was in the hands of gangster capitalists, and the economy started tanking the instant Bill Clinton began packing his bags. We were overleveraged, maxed out and one paycheck away from losing everything. Ask for a raise? Demand longer vacations? Are you crazy, brother? Like Jews assembled in the freezing courtyard of a concentration camp, we stared straight ahead, terrified, hoping not to be noticed, to live to see the next “selection.”    

Fear everywhere! National Guardskids, all of 20 years old and decked out in their best Kevlar, brandishing automatic weapons taller than they are at women and children as they came out of commuter rail stations. Annoying, sure–but what if…what if…what if something happened? We heard that the government was listening to our phone calls and reading our email but instead of summoning up outrage at this brazen and illegal violation of privacy we took cold comfort in that hoary chestnut: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”     

But we were afraid. We all were. We still are.    

Buy more stuff!

Go Sarah Haskins! And what we girls learned from commercials in ’09.

And thanks, AlterNet, for the link.