The Stuff Issue in our Lives.

Michael Jackson is dead. Oh, come on, you thought I was going to talk about THAT? How convoluted. EVERYONE'S covering that. Every station, every second. They'll probably be covering his autopsy at this rate. No, I'm here to talk about something far more important than the death of a pop icon. And honestly, I want to get this out of the way now: I don't care how he really died. There are far more important things in life. There is a part of me that wonders what was true and what wasn't concerning him, but seriously, I could give a flying crap. He's dead, and he was probably very miserable those last few years of his life.

But guess what? It happened. So yeah. Thought I'd address that in the first paragraph, since I'm not living under a rock.

But as foreshadowed by the first paragraph, I'm not here to talk about celebrities. I'm here to talk about something far more important. And that something is the massive American addiction to stuff.

About now, I'm listening to Rockstar by Nickelback. It's a powerful reminder of just how stuff dependant we are these days. I'll admit, it's not wrong one bit to want stuff. What wrong is when we want too much. Come on. Why would ANYONE need 15 cars for a single person on the income?

Okay, maybe I should make a more realistic example. A $3000 computer that isn't any better than my FX6800 performance wise. A $50,000 Cadilac, because you just HAD to have something that costs $500 just to replace a cup holder. A $1900 television that has a picture that looks like crap compared to my $799 smaller version (same brand). That last one addressed to my friend Russ, though he will never read this article.

Do you see a correlation to our horrid obssession and the thing it requires- money? It's no wonder we spend ourselves out of existence. I see it all around me in my daily life. If money were truly no object, there would be no need to worry about the accumulation of stuff. We could get whatever we wanted, provided we had something somebody else wanted.

Am I saying that having money is a bad thing? That depends on your disposition towards it. Money is not an object to me. I need it to survive, yes. But am I always wanting more? Not necessarily, unless it's something that I view as a way to keep me sane. The point is, I try where at all possible to not go over my means. And when someone else is paying the bill, I certainly don't try to jip them out the most I can. When I saw an ad for Alienware back in 2006, I was immediately tempted to get the maximum possible product out of a laptop there- a total value of $3600 when all was said and done. But honestly, reality kicked in as soon as I realized it was beyond my means. So instead, I had my friend buy my a $1600 laptop that was on display at the local Best Buy- much more within them. It wasn't the best machine, but I got by with it.

On the other hand, earlier I mentioned a certain $1900 television that my friend Russ bought. Thinking it would be a quality item, he quickly snatched it up, and we found that right out of the box, the picture was crap. He still thinks it's better than my $799 television, and insists that he's fine with the laggy and VERY lumpy/pixelated picture.

On the other side of the story, that same year, he also bought a $150 desk. When we tried moving it the other day, I was very surprised about two things. 1) It was made of plywood, and he insisted it was made of Oak the whole time. 2) The desk, sufficent to say, had fallen apart the moment we tried to move it. What a waste of $150! He did have need of a desk, most certainly; he used it on a daily basis. But he was so worried with how it looked that by the time he made the purchase he had not the slightest idea what quality it was. There's a line between buying stuff because you need it and being obssessive about having a product, or even between the person who buys the product that's expensive regardless of quality of said product and the person who checks everything for quality. Said line is very far apart, but people need to realize that one is right and the other is very, very wrong.

If you haven't seen the point I'm trying to make yet, you're either not really paying attention or you just missed the entire point to begin with. Money and stuff- and the two most certainly go hand in hand- are possibly (for a good portion of us, anyhow) the two worst influences that drive Americans today. No other country in the world does this quite as bad as us. And it needs to change.

It's time we started using a little common sense. The only solution is to stop spending for the sake of spending. Everyone from Joe Blow down the street to our own government is doing it. And that's just stupid. It's time we rocked America's spending habits like a hurricane.

----------------
Now playing: Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine
----------------
Now playing: Nickelback - Rockstar
----------------
Now playing: Pantera - Cemetery Gates
----------------
Now playing: Alice in Chains - Them Bones
----------------
Now playing: Scorpions - Animal Magnetism
----------------
Now playing: Scorpions - Send Me an Angel
----------------
Now playing: Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane [Live]

Information provided by FoxyTunes.

PS: Unlike some people, I do not use the excuse of "it keeps me sane" just to buy stuff. I only buy something if I've heard really good things about it or have played it before somewhere and REALLY like it in the case of a game, or if I saw it in the theater or have seen it before and liked it or heard really good things about it, or even just having interest in the subject matter in the case of a video. Truthfully, I have bought crap before, but that's the chance you take.