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.
Cheddar Five
All the Excitement Of The Friday Five, Only Much More Boring (If That's Even Possible)
1. When you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night do you leave the seat up or down when you're done?
A tricky question, and one that requires some exploration. If my girlfriend is staying over I try to put it down, just to be polite, but sometimes I forget that it's down and I end up peeing on the seat, which is really sort of gross. Otherwise, I leave it up, unless I haven't cleaned it in awhile and the rim is polluted with urine droplets and pubes, in which case I put the seat down to hide the evidence.
2. When was the last time you forgot to put the cap on the toothpaste and how did it make you feel when you remembered it was left off?
Again, this is a humdinger of a question. I rarely leave the cap off, and I can't remember the last time I did so. I do, however, remember dropping the cap once and when I retrieved it from the floor, there were a couple of pubes stuck to it (probably migrated from the toilet seat). This made me deeply sad, and I ended up throwing the cap away, stealing the cap off my roommate's toothpaste, and weaving a complex web of lies about what happened to my roommate's toothpaste cap. He still doesn't trust me to this day.
3. How many kinds of rice do you have in your cupboards?
I don't have any rice in my cupboards, because I haven't bought groceries in over a year. I do have some leftover Chinese food in the fridge that has some rice mixed in with it.
4. Is white rice inherently superior to brown rice?
Absolutely. However, there are some brands of white rice, particularly Japanese sticky rice, that is head and shoulders above the inferior Minute Rice and Rice-a-Roni white rice wannabes. It's been awhile since I've eaten a quality brown rice, although I did enjoy a nice Jasmine rice awhile back that was particularly enjoyable, primarily because I kept thinking about Jasmine from Alladin. For a cartoon chick, she's fucking hot.
5. If you were a Japanese citrus fruit, which one would you be?
Gotta go with the Nashi on this one. It's kind of like an apple, and kind of like a pear, but I'm hear to tell you, buddy, it's neither an apple or a pear. It's tasterific, and you can't buy a nashi here in America because they're banned? Why? Because the fruit powers that be here in the U.S. of A. have deemed the nashi a threat to the traditional apple and pear markets. The nashi would crush those inferior fruits like Godzilla stepping on a bridge. Damn, I really love nashis.
6. (Hey, this is number six? What the fuck? Oh well, so it's a Cheddar Six) When was the last time you sneezed without covering your mouth?
Just today, in fact. I stepped out of my car this morning, stared indirectly at the sun briefly, and let fly with two photic sneezes, both uncovered. Twas a grand spray of saliva and mucous, and I look forward to doing it again after work.
City Driving Made Easy: The Hard Way
Let me just set the record straight right up front: I'm terrible at driving in cities. Tall buildings disorient me, street signs just confuse me, and my sense of direction would have sunk Columbus as soon as he lost sight of Spain.
With that in mind, it was no big surprise when, Tuesday night following a Twins game, I spent the next hour or so hopelessly meandering Minneapolis side streets. At one point, I was so lost in the suburbs, I almost said "to heck with it" and bought a house.
10:10 p.m. -- I leave the Metrodome parking lot. I take a left, because that's what every other car seems to be doing. And every other driver simply can't be wrong. Can they?
10:12 p.m. -- Every other driver is dead wrong. Traffic is so bad, you'd think the terror alert level was raised to red and everyone is trying to get out of town. The problem is complicated by a small fender bender that translates into a traffic standstill.
10:16 p.m. -- I take the next available right, and I immediately know I made a mistake because mine is the only vehicle on the street. Oh well, at least I'm out of traffic. I may not know where I'm going, but at least I'll get there faster.
10:25 p.m. -- Okay, this isn't funny any more. Where the heck am I? I can either continue on this unknown road, or I can take a right or left onto another unknown road. I take a left onto an unknown road.
10:32 p.m. -- I spy a four lane highway, with real on-ramps and everything! I take it without question, because it simply can't be any worse than the suburban side streets I've been on for the past 20 minutes.
10:36 p.m. -- Well, this can't be right. I don't recognize ANYTHING. Out of curiosity, I flip on the compass that is part of my rearview mirror. It says I'm going North. That's not good. I want to be going South, and a little bit East.
10:40 p.m. -- I take an off-ramp and promptly find myself once again buried in the burbs. I aim my vehicle down a street in the hopes I find something positive.
10:48 p.m. -- I don't find anything positive. I pull into a Super America station to buy a map of the Twin Cities. I also buy two lottery tickets and a Diet Pepsi. I open the map and am confronted by writing so small it can only be read by a scanning electron microscope. The Palestinian/Israeli "roadmap" to peace isn't this complicated.
10:55 p.m. -- After reading the map and kinda', sorta', almost being certain I know where I am on it, I resume my journey. I'm on Portland Ave., or so I think.
11:12 p.m. -- How come the Portland Ave. I'm driving on seems so much longer than the Portland Ave. shown on my map? I may have to swallow my pride and ask *gasp* directions.
11:17 p.m. -- Highlight of the evening. I spy a woman standing on a street corner. I pull up alongside her to ask directions and quickly come to the conclusion that she may, in fact, be a prostitute. I reach this conclusion due to her provocative dress, the fact it's 11:17 p.m., she's on a corner, and she seems unsually pleased to see a smoking hot specimen of male hunkiness pull up in a 96' Cadillac Eldorado.
11:18 p.m. -- The presumed prostitute tells me, in a raspy voice that indicates a two carton a day smoker, that I'm on the wrong Portland Ave. "Honey," she says, and the word makes me cringe, "I think you want Portland Avenue South." I thank her, and she smiles at me in such a way that makes me want to yell "Thank You" to every dentist on the face of the planet.
11:32 p.m. -- I finally locate a highway I'm familiar with and check my compass to ensure that I am, indeed, heading South. After over an hour of perusing Mineapolis suburbs, I'm exasperated and I don't even care that I'm on a road that will take me twice as long as usual to get home.
12:45 a.m. -- I return triumphantly to my Rochester home, dangerously low on gas and exhausted to the point of coma. But, at least I got a new map out of the deal.
Terrorists. . . I Hate These Guys
Sunday evening, as I clicked through the channels, nursing a slight sunburn following 27 holes of golf, I landed on CNN. The topic centered around whether we are losing the war on terrorism. My gut instinct was to yelp an emphatic "NO!" and try to find a rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But, I lingered just so I could get the gist of what they were saying.
They weren't saying anything new, really. Pretty much, in light of the bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and the renewed suicide attacks in Israel, some "experts" are convinced that it's proof the war on terror is a losing one. Puh-lease. If anything, those bombings have all the earmarks of an organization teetering on desperation. If you opt to bomb the very holy land you profess your religious devotion to, indications are high that you don't have a lot of wiggle room. If it's true that the Saudi royal family is running a pipeline of finances to al Queda, the Saudi attacks were a blatant display of biting the hand that feeds them.
Even more damning for terrorist groups has been the reaction from the Arab street regarding attacks on Islamic soil. Regarding terrorism, the Arab street opinion has gone something like this: "If they want to bomb the Cole, fine. If they want to bomb U.S. embassies, okay. If they want to bomb busy markets in Israel, great. If they want to fly into American buildings, that's pretty amazing."
But, as soon as terrorists start attacking Muslim lands, such as Morocco and Saudi Arabia itself, killing their own and not apparently giving a shit (as usual), you get stuff like this:
Tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting "no to terrorism" thronged the streets of Casablanca today, nine days after 43 people were killed in coordinated suicide attacks in the city.
and this:
"The bombers were a group of Muslim fanatics who hate the government and the royal family," said Abdullah [not his real name], a businessman and a member of the 120-man consultative council - the precursor of what may one day become a fully-fledged Saudi parliament. "In their terms, hitting the Prince Sultan air base would make some sort of sense - at least there's an idea behind it. But the idea in Riyadh was to kill and maim as much as possible, and I don't see a political idea there at all.
and this:
All signs pointed to what neither the Palestinians nor the Syrians will acknowledge: Syria has bowed to U.S. pressure and curbed the radicals it has hosted for years.
and this:
``They (the militants) claim they are heroes,'' said Mohammed Zaaneen, 30, a farmer, as he carried rocks into the street. ``They brought us only destruction and made us homeless. They used our farms, our houses and our children ... to hide.''
Far from a terrorist movement that is "winning," these are all prime indications that terrorists are shooting, er, bombing themselves in the foot.
But, that's not what sells in the modern American, and world, media. You keep viewers glued to the screen by offering up just the possibility that we may not be winning. CNN and MSNBC can draw from a pool of Chicken Littles who are willing to spout off for an hour or so about the terrorist sky falling. There's a Chinese curse that says, "May you live in interesting times." Well, these are definitely interesting times, but the major media outlets are determined to make them seem drastically more interesting than they actually are.
What I don't think the media grasps, however, is just how diversified the public has become in its search for balanced reporting. We have the standby big dogs, like NBC, ABC and CBS news, and we have a plethora of cable news channels, and we have magazines and we have newspapers, and now we have the Web, a new tool that I don't think news organizations really have even begun to understand. Using this multitude of sources, we can sift through the crap being flung by the right and the left and find a middle ground that is probably pretty close to the truth.
There are those so hopelessly lost of the right, however, that they will only believe what Fox News and Rush Limbaugh tell them, and there are those lost to the left who only believe what Robert Fisk and Eric Alterman tell them. We have so many information tools in front of us today, we can effectively decide to be informed on all sides, or to galvanize out opinion one way or the other. I'm not sure if that's dangerous or not, but it seems as if it tends to let others think for you, and that's never a safe thing.
That said, I think we're winning the war on terrorism, although I don't pretend to think we'll ever be able to fully stamp it out. As long as there are poor, uneducated, desperate and religiously zealous people on earth, they're going to get together and vent their hatred at their perceived enemies through unsophisticated attacks such as those against Morocco and Saudi Arabia. But, the current terror structure, the one that thrived in Afghanistan and pretty much went unchecked prior to 9/11, that's being dismantled. And, the aura of terrorists as spectral bogeymen is being broken every day, and those that harbor them are either falling into line or being forced to do so at gunpoint.
These are, indeed, interesting times we're living in. But, I don't think they're all that bad.
