At Least My Watch Won't Drown
I made a maddening discovery late Tuesday afternoon. My wristwatch of three years had apparently given up its will for tickdom and it had died there on my desk: time of death, 6:16 p.m. Even a new battery could not resuscitate its beleagured ticker. So, with a heavy heart, I tossed it in the trash with the previous night's pizza crust and set out to purchase a new chronometer to adorn my metacarpal and radius/ulna intersection.
I was off to Wal-mart, that Mecca of all things cheap yet strangely stylish, and my eyes fell upon a near replica of my previous watch, without the digital date readout I had grown to depend on so when writing checks. It's a nice piece of $60 wristwatch technology, a Timex Indiglo with pseudo-gold trim encircling its face. In fact, if you look really close, you can actually see the time of day.
What I have never been able to understand about watches, however, is the advertised depth to which they can descend before their structural integrity is compromised. My new watch, for example, is water resistant up to 50 meters. Now, I can barely dive twenty feet before the pressure in my ears makes me feel as if my brain is being smooshed in a wine press, so I can't possibly fathom taking my watch to a depth of 50 meters just to see if it will spring a leak.
I can just imagine driving along the Mississippi, when suddenly I see a busload of soccer players go careening off the road and into the murky depths of the mighty Miss. Thinking fast, I pull over and go running to save as many people as I possibly can. But, no! I'll have to leave my watch on the bank, lest the bus exceed the watch's 50 meter depth restriction.
And what, I wonder, actually happens when the watch, heaven forbid, comes to rest at a depth of 51 meters? Does it cough and sputter and leak mercury battery toxins? Does it suddenly implode and become a tangled mess of unrecognizable metal?
Seriously, if a steel watch can't function beyond 50 meters, what the hell chance do I have?
Dark Knight. Heath Ledger. Batman. The Joker. Dark Knight. Heath Ledger. Batman. The Joker. Dark Knight. Heath Ledger. Batman. The Joker.
I've never been in debt. Okay, that's not entirely true. Yes, I've been in the kind of debt where I had to make car payments, and I'm currently in the kind of debt that says I have to make house payments.
I've never been in credit card debt, however. Truth be told, I've never even owned a credit card. I don't trust them. I've been conditioned not to trust them thanks to many years of living with college roommates.
Most of my college roommates had this weird outlook on credit cards. Basically, they thought credit cards were magical pieces of plastic that just magically paid for things and that they were somehow immune from the the ensuing debt that came about due to excessive credit card spending.
I'll admit it: I was sort of jealous of my roommates and their magical credit cards. After all, they always seemed to have money and, if they didn't, they just whipped out their credit cards. Books? Put them on the credit card. Food? Put it on the credit card. Night out at a strip club? credit card.
And yet there I was writing checks and budgeting like a fool. I remember thinking that I was doing everything all wrong. I mean, there I would sit, meticulously lording over my finances, while my roommates went waltzing all over town swiping their credit cards with the careless glee of a six-year-old with a loaded pistol.
Then, one year, I was a roommate with a guy named Chad. Chad was actually a former high school classmate of mine. He was, and is, a tech-head. He's one of those guys who was born to know technology. Way back in elementary school, he taught me how to write simple programs for the Apple IIc, and he always just seemed to know everything about computers.
But he didn't know shit about personal finances. He whipped out any one of his many credit cards with the swiftness and ease of a Old West gunslinger. By the time we became roommates, he had already accrued over $10,000 in credit card debt.
I remember thinking what an incredibly large amount of money that seemed to be, especially when I factored in the understanding that he also received financial aid, and that he also worked. Granted, he worked at the local Brach's candy factory on the Gummi Bear line, which paid about as well as you might imagine, but it was still money, so I came to the conclusion that old Chad was a pretty carefree spender.
Well, one day, I popped into Chad's outrageously messy room where I noticed, tucked between two huge bags of pilfered defective Gummi Bears, a credit card notice that was slugged "Urgent!" and another that was slugged "Immediate Payment Required" and still another that read "We Break Fingers And Toes."
Then the calls started coming in, usually two or three a day. "Is Mr. Haugen available? We really need to speak with him." No, he's not here. "Are you sure you're not really Mr. Haugen?" Yes, I'm sure. "Well, when he comes in, have him call Mike at Discover immediately." *sound of shotgun cocking* Will do.
Chad was masterful when it came to avoiding creditors. He always seemed to leave the apartment just two or three minutes before a creditor called. It was like he had some sort of sixth sense. Which was all fine and dandy, except that I ended up being the intermediary between Chad and the creditors, so I got to absorb all the impatient anger and suspicion of basically every credit card company on the planet.
It was the day a creditor appeared, in person, at our doorstep that I realized Chad's debt situation was probably more dire than Chad cared to admit. There was a knock at the door, I answered, and a gentleman in a suit that looked both impressive and threatening stood before me. He asked to see a Mr. Chad Haugen, at which point I heard a little scuffling emanating from Chad's room as Chad scurried out the back entrance which, conveniently, was located at the far end of his bedroom.
We chatted together, the ominous creditor and me, for about an hour, waiting for Chad to get home, even though, of course, there was no way in holy hell Chad was going to make an appearance while that guy was in our apartment. I even had to produce my ID, so the creditor was satisfied that I wasn't, in fact, Chad Haugen.
After that, I believe, Chad ended up getting a loan from his parents, or somebody, so he could pay off his credit card debt at least enough to keep the creditors at bay. He eventually got a job working at IBM, which was a long-assed commute from Winona to Rochester, but paid a whole lot more than the Gummi Bear line.
As for me, Chad's experience with credit cards pretty much scared me away from plastic for good.
Far be it for me to crack jokes about a person dying, but sometimes news of the odd just demands that I say something.
Man Shot Dead over Heaven and Hell Argument
According to a Reuters news report out of (and I swear this is true) Godley, Texas, an argument over who was going to heaven and who was going to hell ended with one Texas man shooting another to death with a shotgun.
Johnny Joslin, 20 was allegedly shot by Clayton Frank Stoker, 21, on Sunday. The two had spent Saturday with two other men night bar hopping in Fort Worth, about 40 miles northeast of Godley.
I'll admit it, after a good night of bar hopping, I've been known to carry on deep theological discussions, usually with the toilet bowl. "Oh, God, why did I drink so much?! Oh, Jesus, I'm going to throw up, I just know it. Holy Mary Mother of God, here it comes. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh. . . *gaaaaaaacckk*
Okay, seriously, I've had religious conversations with my friends over a few beers, but it's always civil and good-natured. We don't sit around with double barrel shot guns under our shoulders just in case we don't agree. Besides, we've all pretty much resigned ourselves to purgatory, so arguing over who's bound for heaven or hell is really pointless.
Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said a witness who was the designated driver for the group told police the four men were sitting at a table outside a trailer park after their night on the town and entered into an argument about religion. The talk became heated when the subject turned to who would go to heaven and who would go to hell.
JOSLIN: Ya know Clayton, I've been thinkin' bout you, and I just don't think yore heaven material. Remember that girl you was bangin' last week that turned out to be 17? Yore goin' to hell fer that one fer sure.
STOKER: You shut up yore mouth, Johnny. I plan on marryin' little Cindy Ellen Layola Fairmont Masterson just as soon as she turns 18 and passes her GED. In God's eyes, I'm lookin' purty good.
JOSLIN: Aw, hell, Clayton. You said that bout little Tanqueray Elizabeth Fredrickson McGill Hampton, and she was 16. Nope, I'm purty sure yore bound fer hell.
STOKER: I'm a warnin' ya Johnny, you shut up yore mouth or I'm a' gonna get mighty angry.
Stoker said he would settle the argument and went into a house and returned with a shotgun, which he loaded and placed in his mouth, Alford said the witness reported.
STOKER: Mmmbfll, mbbll, mrrff! (translation: I'll show YOU who's going to heaven!)
"The victim Joslin then took the gun out of Stokers mouth, saying, 'If you have to shoot somebody, shoot me,"' Alford said, citing the witness report.
JOSLIN: If you have to shoot somebody, shoot me. (Hey, I can't come up with all my own dialog here.)
The shotgun went off, hitting Joslin in the chest and killing him.
I'm thinking Joslin ended up in the heaven reserved for really stupid people.
