April 23, 2009

News is for Losers

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A few weeks ago, I was contentedly sprawled across the couch and enjoying my requisite weekend-at-home House / Law and Order SVU combo marathon-extraordinaire, when my mom casually interjected, “Have you read today’s Newsday?” I, seething from the interruption, responded, “You know I don’t read that shit.” She glanced at the screen. “How many times have you seen this episode?” Umm … “How about ENOUGH?” She turned off the TV and Hugh’s face flickered into the darkness. “Read this,” she insisted. “It’s very interesting.”
Like I said, she knows I don’t read that shit (that shit being newspapers … except the highly accomplished and always riveting Daily Sun, of course) but having learned long ago never to bite the hand that feeds me / gives me cash, I obliged, and hunkered down to read the “very interesting” article she thought would rivet me so.
So I’m sure at this point the suspense is killing you. I’m sure you’re dying to hear what the very interesting article was about, and I’ll tell you: It was about the economy. Surprised? Probably not … everything seems to revolve around the economy these days, at least as far as I can tell from the brief glances of “news” I get every day while flipping to the Sudoku page.
For me, trying to read the newspaper is like getting to the movies an hour late. It’s too late for me to understand what’s going on at this point, it’s fucking dark and I’ll inevitably trip and spill my giant soda all over somebody on my way to an empty seat. What’s the point, really? I can’t enjoy it without my giant soda anyway. It just makes me feel stupid. And I only like to do things that make me feel smart. Like Sudoku. And watching TV.
As an AEM major, I take a lot of economics classes, a lot of finance classes and a lot of other classes that you’d think would’ve given me some insight into what the fuck is going on. But I recently had a conversation with an old friend, a sociology major at Emory who asked me to explain our present financial situation, and in spite of all my ivy-covered education I found myself making shit up. “Please R,” she begged, “I don’t get it. Just tell me where the money went.” And I was like “Nah bitch you’re mad dumb,” and I hung up.
In spite of what my ID might say, I’m only twenty years old. Luckily for me, I ain’t got no money, and when you got no money to begin with, you got no money to lose. My personal finances look pretty much exactly the same as they did a year ago, and I’m sure most of you can say the same. So what’s the problem? Why should I care? I didn’t want to be an investment banker anyway. Let the greedy bitches who got us into this mess figure it out. They’ve probably been reading newspapers for years.
After three years here at Cornell I’ve become accustomed to my career-less lifestyle — sex on the reg, yachts on the reg, fucking good times on the reg … who wants to go to work on the reg when you can relax on the reg? Wake up early on the reg when you can wake up late on the reg? I for one think it’s about time everyone chilled out a bit. Summer’s rapidly approaching, don’t let the recession get you down. As my man Kenny Powers from Eastbound & Down always says, “You can get away with fucking in a handicap stall as long as one of you comes out walking all like a retard and shit.” See you next year!