Totally Skewed: What the financial bailout means to you

 

Apparently, I haven’t been charging, debting or living largely enough because no one has offered to provide me a bailout from my bills. My financial footprint isn’t big enough to matter. If I filed bankruptcy, I simply wouldn’t knock a huge enough dent in the economy to warrant a federal rescue. But trust me, the chocolate industry would feel my pain.

So let me get this straight. I receive a $650 tax incentive check, and financial conglomerates get $700 billion? Can we charge them 21% interest on unpaid balances and 3% for each debt transfer? Seems only fair.

Where will the proposed $700 billion to fix the financial markets come from? Oh, yes. That’s right. The government can simply print money when they need it. And theoretically I can too—at least until I get sent to prison.

Seven hundred billion dollars! (I never thought about it before, but trees really do grow money because currency is printed on paper.) I’m wondering. How many trees is that?

Basically we’re moving from a buy-now-pay-later system to a print-now-tax-later plan. However, we do have choices: we can have a recession or suffer a depression. I’d prefer a do-over.

Those in the know claim the floundering financial institutions are simply too big to let fail. What’s next? Federal emergency loans to folks like Oprah, Donald Trump and Wal-Mart? Where do we go from here? Other than to tent cities.

Young people, listen up. It’s time to start saving now for your parents’ retirement. It’s too late for them to salvage this shipwreck. Sure, those near retirement age could choose to work longer. Though if that happened, you’d have to speak even louder than you do now when talking to call center representatives. And every corner Starbuck’s and McDonald’s would have a greeter.

Welcome to reality.

 

 

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Black hole found!

In a follow up to my previous post, I’d just like to report that I am alive and well. However, as was previously feared, a black hole has indeed been created. And already it appears to have swallowed up half of Wall Street. Scientists and the Federal Reserve say they’ll continue to experiment until they find a fix. 

 

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Totally Skewed: Black Hole Brouhaha

 

 

It seems that I am lucky to be alive because, this morning, at exactly 8:31 BST (which I believe stands for “Blow to Smithereens Time”), scientists near Geneva fired up the biggest atom smasher in the world!

According to several articles I read for at least a few seconds, somewhere along the border of Switzerland and France, in a tunnel built 300 feet below ground, thousands of physicists are attempting to recreate the Big Bang that gave birth to our universe (as opposed to the Little Bang that created my children). This historic event, which reportedly has cost more than 5 billion dollars and employed at least 4,000 scientists, has been feared by some who say that the project could create black holes capable of growing and eventually swallowing the earth like, well, a black hole.

Black holes are made of . . . uh . . . okay, uh . . . see, that’s what the scientists are trying to find out. Anyway, think of them as dense matter that sucks up everything nearby, growing larger and more powerful and stopping only when the food supply runs out—sort of like your basic teenager.

Physicists involved in the project have dismissed public concerns and reassured that there is “little theoretical chance” of producing black holes that are large enough to pose any danger to earth. Oh, yeah? And I recall that, not that long ago, scientists thought there was “little chance” that tobacco could be habit forming, too!

The eventual collision of particles, set to happen sometime within the next 10 days, will create temperatures that are ten million billion degrees (Does it really matter if that’s Fahrenheit or Centigrade?), or 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun! I can hardly wrap my mind around such numbers. But what stupefies me most is this; how is it that we possess the knowledge, funding and capacity to build a machine of this type and yet we still can’t develop an instrument that can painlessly take a picture of my breasts? Of course I’m speaking of mammography equipment, here, not my hubby’s camera.

 

Personally, I don’t get what’s so significant about finding mini black holes. I’ve been developing them for years. They’re just clogged pores. How does one gain the money for such an expensive scientific undertaking? Gee whiz. I can’t even get the funding for a facial.

One of the goals of this giant experiment is to locate what some have called “the God particle,” the particle that gives everything in the universe its mass. If this can be found, then who knows what might happen? Perhaps a docudrama even more profitable than The Secret could be made! Oprah could produce several segments on the research findings, and maybe she could even bring in Al Gore who’ll surely receive another Nobel Prize for this project.

Hey, what’s going on? Where’s that wind coming from? I can’t see. Did somebody turn out the lights? Wha–

Sh-h-h-h-oo-oo-oo-p!

 

More humor at: www.TotallySkewed.com

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To read the stories I referenced, see: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24556999, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/worldnews/europe/2650665, and http://abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2008/02/28/2174524

 

99 Cent Stores Raise their Prices

 

This just in; the 99 Cents stores are raising their prices! For the first time in 26 years of operation, the stores will carry items with prices that exceed the contents of two penny coin rolls. This will not only cause potential shopper confusion of 99 Cents stores with the Dollar Store but could very well lead to further inflation of copper prices. Where will folks find incentive to clean under their car seats or break their little ones’ piggy banks?

 

A 99 Cents stores company spokesperson says further details of the price changes will be released in a news conference on Monday. But already the stores have had to reduce the size of packaging from a dozen to a half-dozen eggs to stay within the 99 cent price promise.

 

 

Why not simply sell eggs in pairs? A cake mix normally calls for only two eggs, anyway. And with Halloween approaching, just think how many homeowners would appreciate being spared some yoke.

 

Why not narrow the types of products sold to offset rising costs? What kind of “beauty products” can you realistically expect to buy for 99 cents and not look like the Joker and smell like a Laundromat, anyway? And how much money do you really save if the expiration date on your salad dressing forces you to discard the product four months sooner than you’d need to throw away an equivalent conventional store purchase?

 

But there’s just something magical about the words “99 cents” that’s always been attractive to consumers. I suspect this is the result of adult longings for the dime stores of our youth, the M. E. Moses, Mott’s Five & Dime, Ben Franklin’s and F. W. Woolworth stores of yesteryear. Ah, what I wouldn’t give for a 10-cent soda and a nickel candy bar, right now. Well, today I suppose I’d have to give at least $2.50!     

 

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Is your refrigerator making you fat?

Should I buy a freezer?

 

 

According to recent reports, freezer sales are on the rise. I think this is due to increases in food costs. (Surely there can’t be that many people needing to hide a body.)

 

Maybe the sudden surge in freezer purchases results from a good old-fashion desire to hoard during lean times. Either that or TV dinner and pizza packaging have finally pushed their way plumb out of the standard side-by-side.

 

If I purchased a freezer of any size, I’d have to place it in my garage (where it would consume all the space I need for more important items–like discarded treadmills). And what would be the point in that?

 

Besides, in the summertime the freezer would require more “juice” to run than I could justify. 

 

So it appears that I will not get to participate in this national trend. That really bums me out because, just last week, Lean Cuisine TV dinners were on sale, two for $5. And I couldn’t take advantage of it.

 

In more ways than one, I have to admit my refrigerator is making me fat.

 

 

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