dialect

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People are the Meaning of Life, Part 6

“Americans spend an estimated 20 billion dollars annually on ice cream.  An amount that could feed 83 million hungry children for a year.” -State of the World 2004 Worldwatch Institute

“…I bet my whole checking account because it all amounts to nothing in the end.” -Jason Mraz, “Curbside Prophet”

Suddenly, the thought of being filthy rich is less intriguing than ever. I’m not talking about turning down the chance to make $100,000 a year. I mean stinkin’ rich. Multi-millionaire. Completely set for life. So rich that it would be expected of me to drive a new Jaguar and live in a mansion with a kidney-shaped swimming pool and speak with a Connecticut dialect and be on MTV Cribs. Set for life.

I came to the realization that I already have everything I need and want.

Aside from paying bills and getting out of debt and buying food, the only money I really spend is on non-fiction books off the discount rack at Borders. So that means the only thing I can’t get enough of that money can actually buy is knowledge. I can gain knowledge through my own life experiences. The other way is to buy it through books written by people who save me the time of living out the experiences they’ve already learned from.

So once I get out of debt, which I eventually will since my wife are strict followers of Dave Ramsey, what would I continually spend a large income on if I ever had it?

More expensive, impressive cars? A huge house, with its higher insurance rates and utilities and more expensive overhead and all the nice furniture and fixin’s to make it look nice?

It all goes back to Forrest Gump: “Now, Momma said there’s only so much fortune a man really needs… and the rest is just for showing off.”

So I imagine having the house paid off, being debt free, happy in a small but nice house, driving decent cars. What do I need a lot money for?

For me, it would be to travel the world. I’ve only been to 4 other countries in this world (not counting a layover in Japan or driving to the Canada side of Niagara Falls). There is so much beautiful landscape to see and so many interesting people to meet and all that weird foreign culture to be exposed to. I could never get enough of that, yet with money I could try.

But.

Instead of sending myself across the globe, treating it and its people as my own real-life Epcot Center, what if I helped them with my time and money ?

Because after a few awesome trips to Norway and Sweden and Switzerland, it’s gonna hit me: This is fun, but ultimately it’s all about me. And I’m not that big of a deal.

And I think that’s why so many big movie stars and rock stars are often so much more aware of the needs of Third Word Countries. They “get” this high concept more than we do sometimes. Because they are set for life, unlike us. They have the time and the money to see the rest of the world. And before too long, they see a need to help the millions of people currently living in slavery and poverty.

It’s inevitable there will always be poor people and therefore there will always be a need to give our time and money: “For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.'” -Deuteronomy 15:11

So if I was so rich I could just retire now, and still have plenty of cash to blow, where would my money go? How would I spend with my time?

Other people. With them and for them. That’s where all the extra would go.

How would it be fair that I had too much while most of the world had way too little? How would I not be a hypocrite to live a life that acknowledges that true religion is caring for the orphans and widows yet I lived a lavish lifestyle? I just don’t see how having that much money could ever make me happy.

To have too much of anything ultimately means that someone out there isn’t getting enough.

http://www.worldvision.org/

https://www.hopeforhaitinow.org/Default.asp

Strip away food, clothes, shelter, and faith. It’s safe to say that anyone reading this on their computer has all those things. What’s left that actually matters to us?

People.

Family and friends.

And complete strangers that need the extra money we have to get a much smaller version of those things we already have.

Life really is that simple.

So if by writing this I jinx my situation and become filthy stinkin’ rich so fate can test if I really mean what I say, I’m not afraid. Because speaking of learning from other people’s life experiences, it’s often those same movie stars and rock stars that “get it” when it comes to poverty in the rest of the world that are also the same ones that prove that having too much doesn’t make them happy.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…” -James 1:27

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” -Edmund Burke

People are the Meaning of Life- Table of Contents

Part 1 http://wp.me/pxqBU-2h

Part 2 http://wp.me/sxqBU-289

Part 3 http://wp.me/pxqBU-7M

Part 4 http://wp.me/pxqBU-8r

Part 5 http://wp.me/pxqBU-j2

Part 6 http://wp.me/pxqBU-tm

 
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I “Get” Conan O’Brien: Why So Many Americans Support Team Coco Over Jay Leno

In the Year 2010…  In the Year 2010…

I am one of those people who function best on 5 ½ to 6 hours of sleep a night.  Any more than that and I’ll wake up with a headache and the rest of the day will just drag by.  This is something I learned in high school (1995-1999).  And the way I found this out was by staying up every night to watch the then unfamiliar Conan O’Brien.

He acknowledged his audience: High school students, college students, and senior citizens.  Demographics showed those were the people who for some reason kept tuning in each night.  Those were the groups of people who “got” his kind of humor.  Such as:

A giant bear wearing a diaper who was put in a chamber with cash flying around who instead of grabbing for as much cash as he could during the 30 second time limit, he chose to grab… himself.

Staring contests between Conan and his sidekick Andy Richter with distractions on stage to make it for challenging for them both.  My favorite was when a robot came out on stage and sat down on a toilet.  The sound of bolts clanking into the bowl were heard.  Then the robot raised his arms in victory.

Andy Richter’s little sister.  She was in love with Conan and would sit in the audience in her pajamas and pigtails and rush up on the stage whenever she got a chance.  I remember having a crush on the 25 year-old actress who played her; it was her first role on TV.  Years later she ended up on SNL and eventually got her own show, Parks and Rec.  Amy Poehler.

Not Cool Zeus.  Conan would flip through his “special NBC satellite” channels to see what else was on while his show was on.  He watched a show called Not Cool Zeus where Zeus broke obvious social boundaries.  One time he drank milk right out of the container from the fridge, looked around to see if anyone was looking, then snuck it back in the fridge.  Another time he did a huge cannonball into a swimming pool right next to a group of people who were just chilling out.  Each time a red logo would be stamped onto the screen that read “NOT COOL ZEUS”.

Raymond, who gives away Preparation H to audience members and sings, “Raymond’s here, Raymond’s here”.

Triumph the Insult Comic dog: “For me to poop on!”

Secrets with Mr. T.

http://hornymanatee.com/

Twitter Tracker.

 

When it really comes down to it, Conan O’Brien is my favorite comedian on TV.  And he has been as long as I’ve been watching him.

I don’t “get” David Letterman’s style of humor.  I’ve tried.  I failed.  The dry, aimless, ad-libbing Midwesterner and his Jewish bandleader Paul Shaffer were never a team that pulled off keeping my attention.  I’ve never made it through a full episode of his, not even the ones where he heavily addressed his scandal.

But Conan’s randomness reminds me of the way my guy friends and I joke around.  It’s not vulgar.  It’s just weird and off the wall.

Conan O’Brien is much more scripted.  Almost too scripted.  And somehow that becomes an advantage instead of a downfall.  It’s part of the fun.  In a way it’s like he’s making fun of how organized the show is.  He has always mocked NBC and his writers.

Like a grown-up version of Pee Wee’s Playhouse where he is the only legitimate entertainer amongst a crew and network consisting of imbeciles.  And a creepy Jewish bandleader named Max Weinberg who just happens to also be Bruce Springsteen’s drummer.  That is solid.

And the fact that Conan refuses to change his Spandau Ballet hairstyle. And that he speaks in a 1940’s radio broadcast dialect.  And that he constantly makes fun of his pasty white skin and lanky 6’ 4” body.

Yet he comes across as the classiest late night host.  Conan is somehow timeless.

I remember a few years ago I remember thinking how weird it would be if any of the late night hosts themselves ended up in the headlines.  Because so much of their job is sarcastically commentating on what’s going on in the news.  Ironic.  Now with David Letterman’s sex scandal, Jay Leno’s failed new show, and Conan’s leaving The Tonight Show, all the bases are covered.

I will always be a Conan guy.  Whether he’s on NBC or not.