PAYDAY WAYS

I know if I mention payday you probably don’t even need me to talk about ways. The ways part is sticking the money in the bank long enough to write checks to spend it, providing you haven’t spent it before you deposit it like some of us.

We all know how it works for the workingman. Most have more debt than money. It is a plain fact of life. So payday is about the mad rush to try and stay ahead of the bill collectors. And hope the dudes at the credit card companies that you maxed out cards with don’t come knocking at the door to find out why you are charging up even more credit somewhere else.

All of that is common knowledge, we shun it in terms of saying it is a good thing, but we know it is true. We are saps for our compulsions. Every new shiny toy that comes along is something to lust for. I know it, you know it and by golly so do all the rich cats who come up with the crap we will pay a fortune to own that will break in a weak and be overpriced.

I guess in part all I am saying is I salute the process. It makes it possible for us to enjoy distractions and forget how we are all slaves in some way to a system that thinks of us as slaves too.

You might think that is funny for a Mayor to say, but outside of the title, being a kingpin in a small city doesn’t make me much better off than a whole lot of people. So I have my right to such opinions too.

And I say all of that, not because I’m thrilled by the process, but because what pisses me off are the few who aren’t. There is always some joker out there who goes against the rules. He saves his money, doesn’t care about having the latest computer, cell phone and cable television. Don’t you hate people who are like that? I think he’s sick!

I mean we go to all this trouble to invent a lifestyle totally unrelated to reality. There are places in the world were people are starving and homeless and we complain when the cable blows a fuse for a few hours or because our internet service is too slow. Now does that sound in all honesty like we have our priorities in the proper order?

Of course it doesn’t. And why should it? After all, I don’t think we ever pretended we were going to solve all the problems of the world. It is so much more fun to spend the time creating fantasies about how life might be. Then we can sit on our lazy butts, just drift away into a void of meaningless existence and rejoice we kept that pretender of reality at bay for another day.

In the meantime, I intend to go to lunch, kick back, get polluted and thank god my payday ways will get me by for another week or two. Sometimes that might lack the drama of the kind of noble approach to life that we should have. But then it also is far more fun that spending time having to solve problems anyway. Pass the remote folks so we can avoid any bumps in the road.