When Will People Learn?

With compunction, I find myself obligated to revisit a matter previously discussed in this forum(http://musingsbymoffitt.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html) on April 26, 2006. The depth my societal responsibility mandates that I must look past the potential for offense against my closest family members (with apologies to my sister in law, an avid Sooner fan) and fulfill the mission thrust upon me. It is a thankless, oft o’er looked task but steeled is my resolve that I will accomplish it to the best of my ability. I can act no other way but captive to my conscience and thus, I press onward…

Bob Stoops, heralded coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, has run afoul of the law. Now before your imagination runs amok, he was not nabbed for illegal recruiting or for paying his players (that was last yearJ). No, much more egregiously, he bought into a pyramid scheme. Evidently, a salary of $3 million per year wasn’t enough money to spend in Norman, Oklahoma and live a pretty good life, so he got on board with a pyramid scheme involving music downloading. He says, “I did not see this as a money making opportunity. I invested because it was a way for my family and me to download music.” Further, Stoops said he was not aware it was a pyramid scheme but that, in total he “helped five or six other people sign up, all of whom are close personal friends or family members”. Bobby, a bit of free advice from me to you, I Tunes sells songs for 99 cents per song and, at $3 million per year, you can probably download enough music to fill up the I pods of your five or six close personal friends or family members.

Anyway, it would appear that my former diatribe on pyramid schemes largely fell on deaf ears and dim minds. Therefore I would be remiss to not again address this issue that plagues our society, yea even the wealthiest in our society. Thus, rendered freely is some of my invaluable time which could have been spent rearing young Samuel and rather I have put together a canon that should assist even the dullest member of humankind in the identification of pyramid schemes. Laminate, memorize, or otherwise store this forthcoming list for felicitously it will serve you. It is construed to be a pyramid scheme if:

1. An unsurpassed business opportunity comes your way and you need to sell the idea to five or six close personal friends and family.
2. The key point that caught your attention is that you can make more in one month than you do now in a year sitting in your pajamas, never leaving your home.
3. The conversation at your front door starts like this: “I’m raising money to go to camp this summer…”.
4. Someone tells you that you can get your set of knives for free if you convince five or six close personal friends and family to buy a set.
5. You have to buy $500 of worthless junk to become an authorized distributor. Why would I then by $500 of worthless junk from you so I can be a distributor of worthless junk when I can just use some of your worthless junk?
6. Your great investment opportunity includes a Nigerian who has inherited a dead relative’s fortune and needs $1,000 to get it out of the United States.
7. The name of the business is Amway, Advocare, Big Planet (thanks TS, I had to sell my computer in a garage sale to get rid of that software) or Cutco.
8. Your phone call to your friends starts out by saying, “You don’t have to buy anything; I just need to practice my presentation.”
9. It involves chain letters. As an aside, chain letters are the bane (how many banes is that now?) of my existence. I don’t have time to photocopy a bunch of junk to mail out at 41 cents per letter to 10 other people and hope to get a bunch of new junk back in two weeks. It’s the 21st century, that’s why we have carbon copy and blind carbon copy with email.
10. You find out about it from an infomercial that runs between the hours of midnight and 6 AM or the hours of noon and 5 PM. Another aside, I see the point but if you are looking for work, shouldn’t you be out job hunting between noon and 5 PM and resting up for more job hunting between midnight and 6 AM? Just a thought.

Though I’m sure there are others, I’ll dispense with this parting piece: the old adage says that to have friends you’ve got to be a friend. Au contraire, to have friends, you’ve got to stop preying on your friends with get rich quick schemes. Take it from me, you’ll be more rapturous in the long run. Now, I’ve got this amazing opportunity for you…

Media Amok!!

It is with great distress that I sit down to pen this entry to you, my loyal readership. I’ll pause now for the collective sigh of, “Here he goes again”, the loudest of which just came from my beautiful bride who hears these dire tales of woe with much more frequency than many of you all do and, therefore, is entitled to a much louder and longer sigh.

My distress does not lie in the fact that my beautiful, check that, handsome 7 ½ month old is now crawling and I feel less like a dad and more like the trusted herd dog. Nor does it lie in the fact that college for my 7 ½ month old is going to cost me (according to my banker) $40,000 annually by the time he’s 18, a number well above the median household income in the United States. That magnitude of that number is such that I can’t begin to save enough pennies or donate enough plasma to pay for that affair. I hope his grandparents are reading this because I’m counting on their financial support. No, my distress stems from a much weightier matter, one that will significantly affect society for the rest of our natural lives, one with far reaching consequences so that this matter has grasped the attention of even the most out of touch and disconnected members of our planet. Our lives will forever be changed because of this breaking news: Paris Hilton feigned sickness and conned her way out of jail, after serving only 3 days of her already reduced 23 day sentence. Then, in a stunning reversal of her fortunes, the judge ordered her back to the clink to serve the aforementioned reduced previously prescribed 45 day sentence. According to reports, amid tears, screaming, and crying out for mommy, she was escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs and returned to prison.

Now, before you jump to conclusions about the state of my own sanity that I would even take the time to acknowledge this event given my utter distaste for anything Hollywood, heiress, socialite, Susan Sarandon, etc. let me stop you there. My distress does not stem from story itself but rather from the fact that, as I awoke Thursday morning, this was breaking headline news on every major network and cable news station, even my beloved Fox News. Does anyone actually care that much about a spoiled rotten, morally perverse, over-hyped, under-intelligent nitwit who apparently feels too entitled to pay for her crimes? Is our society so intrigued with the life of the “rich and famous” that we are willing to pay for equally under-intelligent journalists to stand outside the jailhouse and wait to see what happens? Believe me we pay for it, just follow the trail of money: news shows pay for themselves by airing commercials, which are paid for by companies who sell products that they manufacture which we buy. You might as well cut a check to CBS and designate in the memo line the “Paris Hilton 24 Hour Jail Stakeout Project”. And all this during at time when there is no lack of pressing issues our esteemed media could address. Illegal immigrants pour across our borders, inept border guards let in tuberculosis ridden travelers, to mention just a few. But no, lunacy abounds and we are forced to turn our heads and take notice of a “socialite” gone awry, to pity the terror she must feel as she is carted back to a meager cell with satellite television, to wonder what she will come up with next to get out of doing the time.

I’m powerless to stop this insanity so I guess I’ll just have to try to overlook it. Besides, I’ve got to run…I’m late for my part time college fund raising gig…staking out local watering holes in case Britney Spears shows up in various states of intoxicated undress…I’m told the American public is looking for more news about her escapades and will pay for it…until next time…