"By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 2, 2008
Here's the bad news: Your little recession-deflecting tax rebate? No rebate at all. Not even close.
It's more like this: You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and mutter, here sucker, have some bus fare, and then they cackle and stomp away with all your loot and dignity and hope, back to the White House from whence they came.
What, too harsh? Not really. It's a lovely feeling, made even more sweetly ironic by the fact that Congress will likely soon shove through another $108 billion in war funds like a giant kidney stone through our collective fiscal urethra. Right there, that's about 500 bucks for each and every adult human in America, baristas and Baptists and NASCAR fans alike.
Do you see? Your "economic stimulus" check is meaningless, an empty gesture, a trifling crumb of recompense after robbing you blind via insane gas prices, infrastructure meltdowns, massive failed wars that aren't really wars. Thanks for the bogus check, Dubya, now where can I buy a sliver of our missing national dignity? Oh, that's right.
So then. Here are your bloody nickels, America. Think of it as a "recession whippit," because trust me, its quickie high won't last long. What will you do with it? Pay off the porn bill? Hit the Vegas strip? Stock up on water and freeze-dried meats and a nice Bowie knife in preparation for the apocalypse? Not bad, not bad. Of course, you could also spend it on:
- One share of Google. Hey, it's the most powerful company on Earth. It belches up bits of Microsoft after an organic tofu and wakame salad lunch in its massive world-class floating cafeteria in the sky. Why not buy a tiny crumb of the company that already owns a large piece of you and everything you do and play with and think about and log into every single day? Sort of like buying back a tiny, digitized, bitmapped, rebranded, YouTubed, Street Viewed piece of your own exhausted soul. Neat!
- Four tanks of gas for the Escalade. What, you're still driving that giant Saudi-blessed beast? Still loving yourself some big clunky Range Rover? Good for you (and good luck trying to trade it in). But I'm guessing even you few remaining SUV lovers out there feel a bit of a twinge now when the gas pump tips well over $100 to fill your massive tank as your tax refund merely flows straight back to Bush's cronies in Big Oil in a giant feedback loop of joyful patriotic all-American pain.
- A copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, three bottles of Stoli Vanilla, large hammer. Mmm, the Great American Fantasy, playing the role of a macho Eastern European thug antihero who lives in the seedy underworld of Hellhole City, all broken glass and bad skin and silicone boob jobs and grunged-out everything, killing and stealing and blood splattering and fire, all part of a new and rather insane blockbuster game which employs an astonishing, hyperrealistic animation engine that makes the character's movements so frighteningly lifelike, when you beat down that whore or shoot that cop in the face with an Uzi you can actually feel his facial bones pulverize as his body slams into the pavement and Death itself hovers just over your PS3, eager to go multiplayer on your ass.
Gaming tips: Slam two shots of vanilla Stoli between levels and strike self in head with hammer every time you murder a rival sociopathic thug, to acknowledge/symbolize the death of yet another hunk of any lingering compassion and/or love you may feel in this life. Dude! You're never getting laid! Cool!
- IPod Touch, new Portishead album, bottle of absinthe. Because nothing says modern American irony than listening to the most beautifully bleak and gorgeously despondent album of the year on the most sleek high-tech consumer gadget currently made, all while slowly lowering your brain cells down into the black cavelike dungeon of bittersweet anise-flavored bliss. Or maybe that's just me.
- Three excellent meals at upscale sushi restaurant, attempting with each and every bite not to be painfully reminded of the depleted fish stocks and mercury poisoning and how just about every single game fish on the menu is overfished or horribly endangered or dying out or full of tiny little plastic pellets from the Pacific garbage patch. Oh well. At least the sake is still safe to drink, right? I mean, except for the potential global rice shortage? And the rioting?
- Spiffy new Flip Video camera, copy of iMovie, small vial of unchecked insanity. Dash through airport security waving a small pink Swiss Army knife and screaming "Behold my tiny one-inch pocketknife scissors of terror! I also have large metal nipple rings!" Film wacky reaction from Homeland Security agents. Have spouse upload videos to YouTube. Use remaining portion of tax refund for attorney fees/hospital bills.
- Ticket to latest Judd Apatow flick, one dozen homemade pot brownies, never-used (but still active) gym membership from 1998. Chortle at the wondrous fantasyland of these mindless inverse RomComs, how most every male is a flabby wise-cracking doofus stoner loser who still manages to somehow get the sweet hottie girl because he's such a loveable stoner doofus and she's apparently just not all that bright. Reserve a small amount of money for 10-pack of XXL wifebeater logo T-shirts from CollegeHumor.com and a Black Jesus bobblehead for your cubicle because you're all, like, meta-ironic, and stuff.
- Ten-day silent meditation course/retreat. Do you love that recent study that essentially proves, yet again, what monks and gurus and yogis and wise ones have known for roughly 1 billion years? It's this: Meditation can actually make you more compassionate, can induce states of empathy, can calm the turgid roil and boil of the Grand Theft Auto IV that is you and your badass 1998 Honda Civic and your cube-farm life. It's a breakthrough! Or, you know, not.
Goes well with all the other studies from years past, proving how meditation boosts brain activity, helps focus attention, improves sleep, relieves stress, licks your heart, and helps you realize organized religion is absolutely silly and inane and dangerous because, hey look, close your eyes and breathe deeply and there's the divine, right there, floating just on front of your third eye like a free bonus hooker from Level 9 of GTA-IV! Awesome! BYOZP, SFOS. (Bring Your own Zazen Pillow, Secret Flask of Scotch.)
- Party supplies for the massive bonfire/cleansing ritual we shall have at the beach on 01-20-09. I mean, obviously."
