ScottMcDaniel dot org

http://despair.com/worth.html

This explains SO much.

This afternoon, I was driving home from Hollys doctors appointment when I saw a car on the highway. It was an older car…maybe a 1990 Shadow, something like that. Paint was faded, a bit rusty and it was in the slow lane gathering speed, chugging along as if it were running on repurposed fryer oil.

But what caught my eye was the bumper sticker affixed to the left rear of the car. It was blue with white letters, and simply read “I can’t be broke, I still have checks”.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Ok, yeah, I know you have. It’s been around for ages and is one of those lines that elicit a polite smile and an inner groan when you hear or see it, kind of like ‘someone has a case of the Mondays”.

But what struck me about this were a few things.

First and foremost was the fact that someone had obviously been so enamored with this joke that they had felt the need to see out a bumper sticker. Or, vice-versa, had seen the bumper sticker (presumably in a convenience store or perhaps a Gatlinburg gift shop) and been so motivated by the wit and wisdom of those eight words that they had not only decided to buy it, but had whipped their wallet off its chain, plopped down their debit card, gone out to the Shadow, rubbed off a clean spot with the sleeve of their best Dickies and by God put that sonofabitch right on the car! Oh man, I can not WAIT until the guys at work see that – not to mention all the tail I’ll get at the VFW this weekend!

But aside from the joy of the discovery, purchase and installation of the bumper sticker, there was more on my mind. The sticker was alone on the car.

There were no other stickers extolling the virtues of a specific model of truck…there were no cartoon boys micturating on the competitions logo. No tributes to Dale, no somber memorials to long lost relatives who had led such promising lives that they deserved, nay, demanded a rear windshield salute detailing their expiration date. There wasn’t even a proud declaration of the fact that little Susie had managed to make the honor roll at her school, despite having a parent with such a severe case of social ineptness they thought the aforementioned topical sticker was worthy of public display.

Which begs the question: what was so striking about this bumper sticker that it caused the person who applied it to do so? The obvious answer is that the person is renowned for their poor banking skills. In fact, I would dare say that when this individuals friends told stories about his misadventures that they frequently ended with ‘and all he got was a misdemeanor charge and had to pay back the bank’.

This person became so enamored with their own celebrity that they embraced it. They want the entire world to know that when it comes time to party – when the BP is about to close and it’s 11:30 on a Saturday night – that it doesn’t matter if the ATM is putting out or not, we’re getting that beer. Come hell or high overdraft fees, that checkbook is going to smell like a brewery by the time we head off to church tomorrow.

But then again, maybe the person was not a purveyor of rubber currency. Perhaps instead she was a pure rebel inside but bluster on the outside. She wants to be bad but can’t quite bring herself to do it, no matter how cheap that garden set is at WalMart. She just can’t make that leap and write that check. But oh, how she wants to. Instead, she sees this awesomely passive aggressive bumper sticker and smiles a Cathy like smile, “Oh dear – that is SOOOOO me“, she exclaims to her cats.

Another consideration is that the person may have gotten the bumper sticker as part of a set…it could very well have been a gift from a well meaning benefactor, perhaps a financial advisor of some sort. The sticker, a hat, a tshirt and a beer cozy with the very same credo – all in one box! Thinking about that makes me smile – in fact, I can almost see the pride in our heroes eyes as he strolls out the door of his hand built log cabin wearing the hat and shirt – his Bud draped in polyurethane glory. The triumphant moment when he applies the sticker and stands up, admiring it as he walks away, scratching his ass with the bill of the hat.

Glorious.

Finally, the question becomes “why is this sticker still there?”.

I mean, let’s face it – the car is a clunker. The sticker was faded and peeling on the corners. It’s obvious that this wasn’t a recent purchase. So what could possibly be the reasoning behind keeping it on the car? Maybe it is acting as an adhesive, keeping the bumper attached to the vehicle itself…or perhaps the super strong glue they use in bumper stickers was so damned good that they had tried to remove it at some point (presumably when they sobered up) and had found that in attempting to remove it that they were in fact creating a rip in the time-space continuum itself.

Whatever the reason, I guess I’ll never know. But it makes me happy to think that somewhere out there is a person who has it made. That no matter how bad things get, be it expensive gas, foreclosed home, lost job, no family or friends – well, they aren’t worried.

They have a motto and they’re sticking to it.

Another instant classic from the Onion.

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA—Kevin Higgins always hated gym class. Like many of his classmates, he questioned the relevance of things like “exercise” and “physical fitness,” and wondered if these skills would ever have any real-world applications. Though he endured more than 720 hours of gym over 12 years, the 38-year-old accounting clerk said Monday that he has still never used physical education once in his life.

“I don’t know why they bothered teaching us all that stuff,” said Higgins, who since graduating has not once encountered in a situation that required him to move his body at a sustained pace or keep himself in healthy shape. “I mean, come on—when will I ever need to physically exert myself for an extended period of time?”

Higgins is not alone. According to a recent poll, nearly 85 percent of all Americans admitted that, since entering the real world, they have found very few reasons to utilize the concepts they learned in physical education. In fact, most high school graduates claim that despite their gym teachers’ insistence that this knowledge would come in handy later in life, they have still never used bending, breaking a sweat, or coordination.

“I remember my gym teacher droning on and on about this thing called ‘physical well-being,’” Higgins said. “I still don’t even know what that means.”

Many educators and high-ranking health officials maintain that it is essential for young adults to learn such valuable skills as participating in activities and interacting with peers, increasing the intake of oxygen and nutrients to the blood, going out of doors, and moving. However, thousands of Americans have nonetheless gone on to lead very successful lives without ever bringing their heart rate over 120 beats per minute.

Erica Burnstrom, a 28-year-old aeronautics engineer living in San Jose, CA, said that abstract concepts such as aerobic activity and raising one’s knees above the hips in a rapid “pumping” motion have not translated into any practical applications in her day-to-day life.

“I never use any of that stuff, like walking quickly for five minutes,” said Burnstrom, who paused from using the Pythagorean identity to solve for the cosine of 71° and 144° in order to speak to reporters. “I understand that my phys-ed teacher needed to know all that stuff because that was his job, but I’m not some specialist who needs to lie flat, lift her torso into a sitting position, and then return to the original position for a living.”

“I wish they’d have taught us useful things in gym, like sitting at a computer and ordering things,” Burnstrom added.

Many Americans claimed that once they finished high school, skills such as increasing joint mobility and building muscle strength were no longer necessary.

“If something needs to get from one place to another, I can just use my cell phone, or hop in the car. And I know they say that physical education promotes balance, but that’s what my cane is for,” said Miami, FL resident Keith Monahan, 32. “The only thing I still use from gym class is that occasionally I’ll throw on some sweatpants while I’m sitting on the couch watching television. So I guess I learned that.”

Omaha insurance salesman William Haylor, 43, said that when his 8-year-old son asked him how to do a chin-up, he realized that he had simply forgotten.

“I know I used to be able to do that, but for the life of me I can’t remember,” Haylor said. “They’re really hard to do. I think that’s why I stopped.”

“I wish I could help him out,” Haylor added. “But what’s the point? He’s never going to use it anyway.”

In response to these findings, many Americans have urged the government to stop wasting millions of dollars on useless physical education programs and start focusing on real problems, such as obesity, arthritis, and chronic back pain.