Capitalism, Free Enterprise & Greed

Maybe, that explains why I still duck in my sleep while dreaming of hitting the lottery and winning a lot of money. Turn on your television. What do you see? Actors, news reporters, talk show hosts, game show hosts, celebrities, athletes? Did you notice that look they all have?

I'll give you a minute to take another gander at those people on your television screen. Go ahead take your time and look closer at them. Switch back and forth from Oprah to General Hospital to the ballgame to the judges and host of American Idol. They've all got the look and it's all the same. Did you see it?

It's that assured confidence that one gets when they know that they don't have to worry about affording food, shelter, clothing, and/or anything else for that matter, other than how to have a good time, in their case, an understatement, hence, the look. Set for life, they have plenty of money and can afford people, an entourage, to take care of their every need. They all have the look, the look of money.

Did you see Mariah Carey on American Idol the last year? She had the look. Okay, granted, I had a hard time looking higher than her inflatable boobs, but she's loaded with more dough than she is with Silicone. She's got the look in spades. She's a Diva.

They all got it. They all got money. Either you got it or you don't got it. Either you have it or you don't have it. From the time of early man, there have been the haves and the have nots. Unfortunately, it's such a small proportion of our population, who has that kind of money, yet, to us, that is all that we see because there it is in front of us and on our televisions. We are blinded by the colored light of our high definition, digital television sets by the celebrities we emulate, but will never meet.

After a while, after watching television for years, and after tired of being a have not, we feel entitled. We feel cheated. We believe that we should live the life of those who flaunt their designer gowns, diamond rings, and expensive cars. After a while, living vicariously through those personalities, who we see on television, is a better option that the life we have at home. Finally, now that we're older, we accept our lot and life and take it for what it is, entertainment and no longer hound celebrities for autographs and stalk entertainers in the way that I used to do. Sorry, I digress. Never mind, that's another story for another time.

Unfortunately, none of us can have that look, that swagger, and that nonchalant, carefree attitude if you don't have money, a lot of money. Money, money, money, it's all about the money. Those of you who are strong, those of you who dance to your own imagined music, and those of you who don't mind having nothing don't need money, money, money. That's not what it's all about for you, Honey, the money.

Yes, believe it or not, there are those people who have a higher calling. Be it helping people, improving themselves, and/or finding God, their thoughts are not wasted with wishing they had more money. Whenever they do wish for money, they wish for the money to help someone else. They have already found their secret to happiness and joy. They don't need any more money than they have already to live their lives and revel in their purpose. They are the lucky ones. They are the minority. The rest of us want money and more money. We are the supporters of the saying that 'you can't be too rich.'

"Show me the money," said Cuba Gooding, Jr. playing Rod Tidwell to Tom Cruise who played Jerry Maguire in the movie, Jerry Maguire.

Speaking of show me the money, every Saturday and Sunday the Catholic Church's faithful routinely pass around the collection plates. When you think about it, how rude is that? I mean, there you are praying to your God and the long arm of a mortal man holding a basket on a pole is expecting your money for the privilege of praying to your God in God's house. Nothing is free, not even praying, hits home then.

The Catholic Church is the worst offender when it comes to asking for, hording, and grubbing for money. Dante Alighieri wrote about the greedy, money grubbing Popes burning in Hell for all of eternity, when he wrote his Divine Comedy poem, Dante's Inferno with Virgil guiding Dante through the nine circles of Hell, with each saved for the gradual and increased wickedness of those condemned to Hell. The Popes command the lowest circle, the eighth circle of Hell, just above Satan who is condemned alone to the ninth circle. Dante's poem gives the readers his thoughts about the Catholic Church and after seven hundred years, nothing has change. God save us from these mere mortal supposed holy men, who want money more than anything and anyone.

I'm Catholic, but I'm not so blinded by the light of God that I don't see these mortal men for who they are. I'm ashamed by their double standard asking the poor to give, giving the poor little and return, and living their lives as holier than thou royalty. Yes, I agree, not every priest, bishop, and cardinal is like that, but show me your friends and I'll know who you are.

The Catholic Church cries poverty and yet they have a city of gold, Vatican City. They ought to be ashamed of themselves for taking pennies from those who can ill afford to give it, when they feather their nests in the longest run scam in the world with their non-profit religion. If you go to Rome, you don't see priest studying the bible, you see Bishops and Cardinals analyzing the stock market and buying real estate. Hey, we've all seen Godfather III to know the real story.

You just have to take a walk about your neighborhood, especially those of you who live in the Northeast, to see that the Catholic Church owns some premium property and pays no taxes. Behind closed doors, locked gates, and manicured lawns they conduct their religion too much like the business that it is. It's sad when even your religion is more concerned with accumulating money than it is with saving your soul.

Harvard University is a school rich with endowments, but Harvard pales in comparison to the monies that reside in secret accounts in Switzerland under the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Shame on them, shame on the Pope, shame on his Cardinals, and shame on his Bishops, they all ought to be ashamed. Money means more to them than religion, more to them than God, and especially more to them than you.

What ever happened to the vow of poverty that the priests took? Why do Nuns all live together in a convent and the priests live like lords of the manor? Every priest that I know drives a brand new Buick, lives in a beautiful rectory, has plenty of food and booze, and has a cook and a housekeeper to boot. Besides that, with their housing, food, and clothing paid for, they're even paid a salary? How's that for religious welfare? Are you kidding me? I want to be poor like that, Hail Mary, glory to the Almighty, Amen, take me; I'm ready to give my life to God.

"What are we having for dinner tonight?"

"I've prepared roast lamb with a nice Burgundy wine, for you, Father."

"Marvelous."

While the rest of us are eating heated up leftovers, the Bishops and the Cardinals live like Kings. No cost is spared for their lifestyles. It's a disgrace. Their furnishings are lavish and their furniture is custom made. They live luxuriously. I want their lifestyle. Besides, I look good in red.

These holier than thou guys, Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, and Priests are no better than, gulp, public servants. Now, to me, servants who help the public are those who don't expect anything in return. Right? Wrong! When I think of a servant, albeit a public servant, I think of someone who is subservient to me, someone who is solicitous of me, and someone who is lower than me in status. Oddly enough, I sound more like the definition of a middle class citizen than does my public servant meet that definition.

How can a politician, pardon me, a public service take office as an ordinary man or woman, a lawyer, perhaps, making a good living, and finish his or her career in public service a very wealthy person? I don't get it. How does that happen? I thought these people were more interested in serving the public than serving and helping themselves to making money. Am I that naïve? Is our country so twisted and we still believe these people represent our interests?

"Do you remember the Hare Krishna?"

Those weirdos, I mean, religious zealots, sorry, I mean, those annoying people who shaved their heads, wore long robes with sandals, and followed you around the street, the subway, the park, and the airport, while begging you non-stop for money.

Now that I think about it, they always had the hottest women, albeit a bit spaced out and hippie like, but nonetheless, the women they recruited were all young, tall, thin, shapely, and pretty. Moreover, none of them wore bras and you could discern their nipples through the sheerness of their robes. I remember being engaged in a thoroughly enjoyable conversation, over their religion, of course,while enjoying the view of their tits that their sheer robes provided.

"Hare Krishna."

Back then, I thought about joining their cult to get in some of the pants, I mean, robes of the women.

"Hare Krishna. Hare, Hare, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Krishna."

Some Hare Krishna even turned violent, until you relented and gave them your bread, dough, money, cash. I have to give them credit, they were a relentlessly persistent and annoying bunch of zealots, much like those homeless guys who wash your windshield, whether you want them to or not and get violent, until you relent and give them want they want, a few dollars.

Only, I didn't give the Hare Krishna my hard earned cash, I gave them my fist. Ripping off the robe, pushing the beggar down to the ground, and stripping this zealot naked, I literally beat the crap out of that Hare Krishna woman when she wouldn't stop asking me for money. She was the toughest woman I ever fought. There she was pinned under the weight of my body and on the ground naked... Okay, never mind, that's a story for another time.

I haven't seen them in some time, but do you know where the Hare Krishna are now, I mean, where they live? I'll give you a hint. Manny Remirez, the ex-star left fielder for the Boston Red Sox, and who earns twenty-five million dollars a year and who now plays for the LA Dodgers, had his ten million dollar condo on the corner of this street. Give up?

The Hare Krishna have their headquarters, corporate office, church, temple, whatever you want to call it in a four story brownstone on the first block of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. For those who don't know what the first block of Commonwealth Avenue is, allow me to elucidate to you what the first block of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston is.

It is the most expensive parcel of real estate in Boston, even more expensive then Louisburg Square, off Mount Vernon Street, where Congressman Kerry lives with his heiress wife, Teresa, of the Heinz Corporation. Kerry lives next door to Tom Stemberg who once owned Staples Office Products, after buying it from none other than the presidential hopefully, the ex-governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. Their ten plus million dollar properties pale in comparison to those on the first block of Commonwealth Avenue.

I figure the Hare Krishna house, headquarters, corporate office, church, temple, whatever you want to call it, is worth about twenty million dollars. That's a lot of scratch earned from begging for spare change. "Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare."

Henry David Thoreau needed very little money to build his cabin in the woods by Walden Pond in Massachusetts and survived living off the land, while writing his verses and contemplating his perfect transcendentalist society. Even though I admire what he did, anyone living in the woods today for that long of a period is weird. Can you imagine walking through the woods with your children and a wild man shouting transcendental verses emerges from a one room cabin?

"Come along, kids. Don't stare. Don't dawdle. Just run."

Nonetheless, Henry David Thoreau didn't need any money. In a word, albeit a hyphenated one, he was self-sufficient. So wasn't Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, self-sufficient. He didn't need money to live in his one room shack in the back woods of Montana either. See, remember I told you, anyone living in the woods today for that long of a period is weird. You just have to think of Rubeus Hagrid from Harry Potter fame to understand my point. The Unabomber constructed his bombs and mailed them, while writing his manifesto and murdering 23 innocent people. He was another person who didn't need any money.

Charles Manson of Helter Skelter fame wasn't after money, when he murdered Sharon Tate, her unborn baby, and others in the Tate-LaBianca murders. He was too crazy to need any money. Even when they invaded that home and raped that woman, the wild, fictional boys from Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange weren't looking for money, as much as they were looking for bedlam and outrageousness. They were all crazy.

When those Middle Eastern terrorists flew our planes into our Twin Towers, they didn't do it for the money, it wasn't about the money with them. They didn't need money. They were crazy. Crazy people are the only people who don't worry about not having enough money, wishing for more money, or not having any money. If you're sitting there and not worrying about money, while reading this, it must be gratifying to know that you are insane, albeit poor. Congratulations, you passed my little test of insanity. Hey, even though you're crazy, you no long have to worry about money, like the rest of us still do.

Notwithstanding, do you see my point? Unless you're one of these crazy people, you don't need any damn money. The rest of us are spellbound, preoccupied, working two jobs and still not getting by, not making enough, never having enough, getting further in credit card debt, and always needing and wanting more money. The rest of us are bone tired, depressed, and slowly killing ourselves because we don't have the time to take proper care of ourselves with diet and exercise. Many of us can't even afford proper medical care. Maybe, instead of working all day, we should beg on the street, as did the Hare Krishnas. Who knows, one day, we could live on Commonwealth Avenue, too.

"Give me money! That's what I want. Money. I want money."

Don't you get tired of watching people with money? That's all we do, you know, we sit in our living rooms, bitch about not having any money, while watching people with money. Yet, because we sit there hour and after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year watching rich people on our televisions, with our loyal ratings we earn them, yep, you guessed it, more money.

It's time to get up off our fat asses and revolt. We, as viewers, want our share of revenues not for watching your syndicated, all too brief of a season television programs, but for watching your too many damn commercials over and again. That's what television is all about, anyway, commercials. It's not there to entertain us. It's there to sell us. It's about commercial broadcasts. It's there to sell us stuff and to make money for the networks by using the programs as filler for commercials. I'm not writing anything that you don't already know. Still, it's good to finally see it written to believe it and to reinforce it.

Do you think those people, who we watch all day on television, watch other people with money on television? Nah, they don't have the time to do that, to watch television all day. They're too busy making money and interacting with people who have money. Rather than watching television like the rest of us, they are too busy having a good time spending their money, while we dopes are glued to the television not making any money and watching them making money.

Weird, huh? But, think about it. It's true. We're no better than a herd of cows. Turn off your televisions. Turn off your computers. Go outside and let's make some money. Only, can I borrow a few dollars to tie me over until payday? I'm broke.

Oprah Winfrey leads the money list, yet, again, earning two hundred and sixty million dollars last year. Boy that's a mouthful to say fast three times because she's made that amount of money, for more than three consecutive years. Let us all take a moment to understand and reflect on how much two hundred and sixty million dollars really is. That's a lot of dough, huh, two hundred and sixty million dollars every friggin' year?

I bet you could do a lot of damage with that kind of money. Just think of all the things you could do, all the people who you could help, all the clothes, cars, and homes you could buy, and trips you could take. You could get your breasts implanted, both of them, your face lifted, your teeth fixed, all of them, your hair coifed to perfection, and even have plenty of dough left over for a psychiatrist and rehab, when you finally fall of the wagon. And you'd still have more than two hundred and fifty million dollars left and more to come next year.

You can't spend that amount of money in a lifetime, in ten lifetimes. I dare you. I double dare you to find a way to spend that kind of money, yeah, even after buying a baseball or football team. If you did that, buy a sports team, even more money would come rolling in to make you richer than you were before.

Boy that would finally shut your wife or girlfriend up about getting a job, when you had that kind of money hidden under your mattress. Yeah, well, Oprah makes that kind of money every year and has made that kind of money for the past dozen years. I love you, Oprah? Buy me a new car, please, a Mercedes Benz.

Jerry Bruckheimer of CSI, Cold Case, and Without A Trace fame was a distant second earning a difficult to squeak by on one hundred and twenty million dollars. My girlfriend loves those shows. When she's not watching HGTV design, design on a dime, gay design, nude design, and gay, nude design television shows, House Hunter, How Much is Your House Worth, Debbie Travis, et al, she's watching reruns of CSI, Cold Case, and Without A Trace.

I hate Bruckheimer's shows. Give me shows with sex to violence every time. I'll take nudity to blood any day. Instead of shoot 'em up and blow 'em up, I'd rather watch naked people, especially naked women...dancing, around a pole...and sitting on my lap...and doing me. Yeah.

Every time I watch CSI, those forensic scientists are walking around with their little flashlights, while in someone's home, I yell at the TV.

"Put a light on. Hello? The light switch is right there?"

Now, if Marge Helgenberger was naked, then I'd be watching more of CSI. She's a good looking broad, in a crooked sort of way.

Why must it be so dark? Is that to give it an ominous effect? Is that to scare you and to keep you on the edge of your seat? Well, it just gives me eye strain.

Those shows strain my eyes so much that, when I finally see a semi-naked woman on television, I miss seeing the up skirt or down blouse view because they show it too fast to see it and my eyes are still strained from watching CSI. Damn you Bruckheimer.

Stephen Spielberg raked in his one hundred and ten million dollars that he earns every year from his movie residuals. The guy hasn't made a movie in a while; he doesn't have to, he just sits at home eating popcorn with his MILF of a wife Kate Capshaw, while watching reruns of Jaws, ET, and Jurassic Park. Boy, I'd watch Kate Capshaw, if she ever decided to make a guest appearance on Gay, Naked Design. She's got a hot body. She's got a rack. She's got a rich husband and she'd want nothing to do with me.

Do you like golf? Do you play? What's your handicap? Hey, be honest about your golfing score and don't make me come over there and take a nine iron to the back of your head. Sorry, I've been watching one too many episodes of CSI lately. Admittedly watching CSI is better than watching Gay, Naked Design shows because, instead of taking a nine iron to the back of your head, I'd be decorating your ass with fabric.