Good and Bad News

The good news: Basil was really relaxed after a day of boogie boarding and lying in the sun on the beach.

The bad news: The sunscreen should have been reapplied more often because by 10 p.m. his stomach and chest were the color of a cooked lobster. Today he says it feels like a million needles are stabbing him.
I guess we'll have to find a better way for him to relax, because when it comes to putting on sunscreen, it's like trying to apply it to a three-year-old.

More good and bad news: I got a refund check of $74.80 from State Farm for my car insurance. The letter stated: "When financial results are better than expected and business conditions permit, we are pleased to return part of your premium. We enjoy these positive results because of our policyholders' attention to safety and our careful management of your premium dollars." Yay!

The bad news: I got a bill for lab work from my physical for $85, which doesn't say it's covered by insurance. It was last year, but the doctor sent me to a different lab, and this year the blood was drawn in her office. I'm hoping it's actually covered, and I'll call Monday to find out, otherwise, that refund check is going straight to the bill for the lab. Wah!

A Day of Relaxation

Today we're taking Basil to the beach for some much needed (forced) relaxation. He's been working every night and all last weekend on his crafty side business and his boss even sent him home from work Thursday because his eyes were all bloodshot and he looked awful. Of course he went home and worked his second job. I figured the only way to get him to relax was to get him to the beach. There he swims, lies around, reads and always feels great when we come home. I know the side business will help pay off the mountain, but I'm afraid of what kind of mental and physical shape he'll be in when that year's up. I don't want to look like I'm marrying a hobo next summer.

Oh, yeah, and maybe I'll finally get to balance the checkbook and post June's finances this weekend.

Basil's Intervention

Sorry, I've been out of commission for a while, but Basil was using both computers for his crafty side business this weekend and I worked late yesterday. I thought I'd better interject before people become too depressed and think Basil's going off the deep end. Basil says his brother is "more successful" than he is, but he's basing success on what capitalism, advertising and our society deems "successful".
Yes, his brother makes a lot of money, but he's 30 years old and I've given up learning the names of the latest girlfriend because I know it'll change before I even get the chance to meet her. He parties every weekend, which Basil and I have long outgrown (not that we don't like partying with friends, but going to bars has never been a weekly activity for us). Yes, he's buying a house, but he's never camped on a beach at Catalina Island, hiked the Rockies, or seen dolphins chasing a whale-watching boat. He hasn't moved across the country and when it's 0 degrees out in Chicago, we're running errands in t-shirts and jeans. He hasn't helped raise three wonderful boys, who are smart, funny, creative and just fun to hang out with. His brother may seem successful to the outside world, but he's going it alone, not letting anyone get too close to him. Basil throws himself into the world and new experiences. He's smart, creative, generous and has a fiancee´ and family who love and support him. And you can't buy that down at the Wal-Mart.

Holy Cats

My, that last post was a cheery one.

I've run myself ragged trying to manage my Crafty Side Business and my full time job and I'm coming apart at the seams. Emotionally battered. Tired beyond reason. My successful younger brother buying a house and I'm in the gutter trying to crawl my way up to $0.

My only excuse is that this site is titled "Freak Show." Lest anyone get any ideas that it's anything but.

Trying to think postivie thoughts. None come to mind, at present. But what is there to do but soldier on? At least money's being thrown at the mountain.

Movin' On Up

When you move to a major urban center to try and upgrade your financial fortunes, you often neglect to look around you at the splendor such a place has to offer. I mean, if I hadn't looked around recently I would have missed:

The beauty of the slow, graceful arc of a tall unconscious man, and the wet, deep slap his head made hitting concrete. I would have missed his assailant, chest puffed out, striding away triumphant in his drunken, shirtless glory.

The beauty of several dozen pigeons eating out of a wet garbage bag in the parking lot of a Home Depot - eating and screwing, sometimes at the same time.

A two hundred pound woman urinating quite vigorously, in the middle of the sidewalk, at 3:30 on an airless, sun-baked afternoon.

In other news, you can read about how a guy blew $210,000 on drinks this weekend. The story is here.

Going Into Debt For Jesus

Bianca and I have never had cable. Ever. Whenever we enter a hotel room, the first thing that is done - before bags drop from shoulders- is the television is turned on, usually to the Weather Channel, which I could watch for hours. I could rent a hotel room, watch the Weather Channel for 24 hours, and leave completely satisfied. That's what no cable has done to us.

At home, my options were limited to the crap network stations, the Home Shopping Network and several (13) Spanish-language stations. Then there was TBN. I used to watch the Trinity Broadcasting Network way more often than I should have. I watched it for the sheer, gleeful horror of its entertainment value: the Crouches (see Jan pictured above), the silly movie premieres (watching Christian filmmakers and broadcasters act all "Hollywood" remains endlessly entertaining to me) and, of course, Benny Hinn with his amazing Holy Spirit Knock You Over Spells. I mean the guy is a real-life X-Man. There's something so ornately sleazy about him that makes you suspicious he bathes only in Cristal champagne.

I was reading a William Lobdell article in the Times today titled "He Had Faith In His Job" in which Lobdell talks about his years covering the holy beat. He mentions TBN's "prosperity gospel":

"TBN's Creed is that if viewers send money to the network, God will repay them with great riches and good health. Even people deeply in debt are encouraged to put donations on credit cards." (italics mine)

"'If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed...you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven,' Paul Crouch, co-founder of the Orange County-based network, once told viewers. Meanwhile, Crouch and his wife, Jan, live like tycoons."

They need the money, you see, for the $21 million dollar private jet, 30 homes across the country and their two mansions in Newport Beach. Oh, and the ranch in Texas. And the taxes they have to pay on these donations? Nada.

"Even people deeply in debt are encouraged to put donations on credit cards."

Look, somebody's gotta pay for Jan's pink skyscraper wigs.

Debt Numbers Updated

Debt total now stands at $14,294. This number would be much lower if I wasn't reinvesting profits from the Crafty Side Business back into it, but today I nearly made as much from sales as I made at work.

The hope is once I have the business where I want it I can grow it steadily while using profits to obliterate debt. I would love to be blasting a grand off the mountain every month, but that doesn't seem feasible just yet.

So, My Credit Card Company Screwed Up - Does This Mean My Balance Will Stay At 0% Forever?

Upon double checking my statements online, I noticed that a 0% balance transfer had been misapplied as 9.9%. One of the statements showed all sorts of corrections and additions and subtractions, and they were named strange things like FUND READJ FRONT END FEE MALJUS TW 769EEHJ.

I called the company.

"What's the deal on all these corrections?" I asked.

"We misapplied a transfer rate. It's been corrected," the woman said.

"I see it's been corrected."

"Of course we apologize for any inconvenience," she said.

I was trying to hold my phone to my ear and urinate at the same time. I had been on hold for 21 minutes and the woman had come on just as I had begun to use the bathroom. "So...you make a mistake, I get an apology - but I make a mistake and I get 29.9%?"

"Is there anything else I can help you with today, sir?"

I had a vision in my head, being fresh from a viewing of the latest Harry Potter film. In it there are beings called Dementors, which suck the life out of you, your very soul trailing like vapor into their mouths. This is what it feels like, I thought. Talking to this woman, who thanks to the wonders of globalization is sitting in a room full of other women, women who speak English better than I do, somewhere in Ajjampura, India - I truly felt my soul being sucked out and into the pinprick-sized mouthpiece of my cell phone.


Gah. I've gotten so used to not speaking to these "account specialists," that it pains me when I have to do so.

A Nasty Little Secret About The Secret

A while back I wrote about the Secret. About how the Secret was essentially crap. But something happened recently that was more than a little bizarre. And it had to do with the Secret.

Because I'm sometimes known as a "wiseacre," or even a "smartaleck," or occasionally, if people are being particularly cruel, a "wisenheimer," I've been known to mix it up a little bit. Zig instead of zag. Not "hit that" when someone commands "hit that." So when I was listening to the audio version of The Secret, there came a point where the author said to imagine something positive you would want. Something you really, really want. So I did. But I didn't think of anything positive; no, because I'm a "wise guy," I thought very specifically and very hard about wanting a certain co-worker to leave the company.

This person - who, mind you, was considered by all within the company to be a lifer - is very suddenly no longer with the company.

I still think the Secret is utter shite, but let's be honest here - I did get a bit of gooseflesh over the whole affair. And just to be one the safe side, I'm going to keep my negative thoughts in a mental "lock box" for the time being. Let's face it, I'm just too cosmically powerful right now.

Mommy, There's No More 'Mercials For Nuggets! I Feel Empty In My Tummy And My Soul, Mommy

Having observed the "McDonald's-As-Crack-For-Youngsters" phenomenon with the spawn of my friends, I find this article interesting. Apparently some of the largest food companies are going to restrict advertising aimed at children under 12. Including those nugget-dealers McDonald's.

Of course parents should be encouraging their sugar-addled young to get out from under the gaze of the electronic babysitter (or the Flat Screen Love Substitute, as it's known in some households) and go outside. There are billboards I see every day that try and encourage parents to turn off the television, or to serve vegetables at dinner. What has happened where we feel like we have to use billboards to instruct people that Ho Ho's and Red Vines are not a nutritious dinner? I think once we've gotten to that point as a society, it may be that we've peaked on the ride and it's time to just throw up your arms and scream as it rockets downward.

I, of course, was above all that advertising to the under 12 set when I was included in that group. Pay no mind to the overflowing boxes of battered, very un-mint-in-box Transformers and G.I. Joe figures in my parents' attic.