Hard Times....

Let's see.....

In 2009 your net income was about $5.5 million dollars. That's on top of spending the majority of that year living free in a 132-room mansion with a staff of servants and chefs that bring you Wagyu beef and fly you everywhere in a private luxury jumbo jet.

In 2008, you only made about $2.6 million.

In 2007, your reported net income was $4.2 million.

In 2006, you reported $991,296.

In 2005, you reported almost $1.7 million, and for several years before that you struggled to get by on around $250,000 a year. Somewhere in that time ya'll bought a 1.5 million dollar home in the Chicago burbs.

Life's a bitch, ain't it homie?

If I take our last five years' worth of tax returns and combine them, I still don't break the $250,000 mark that you enjoyed in an average year, so don't come crying to us on TV about how you've had hard times, too.

No way, homie. I know people who have been on hard times.

Hard times are when you have to send a car back to the bank after only 4 payments & screw your credit rating up because one of you loses a job when their company folds. Hard times are when you snag the coupons out of the newspaper that comes to your jobsite to save extra money without buying a newspaper full of bad news & lies.

Hard times are when people are grateful to have their unemployment extended to 99 weeks because they apply for ten jobs a week and send out 10 resumes a week for a year and a half with no results. Hard times are when employers have dropped wages to the point where you'll LOSE money by taking the one menial job you got offered because it pays less than you were making on unemployment.

Hard times are when the government shuts your industry down to fulfill an agenda. Hard times are when you find yourself sneaking rolls of toilet paper home from work to free up money for the light bill. Hard times are when you get stuck doing the work of two to three people because they won't/can't hire anyone to help you or because they let so many people go that you have to pick up the slack. Hard times are when you can't complain to management about work conditions because they'll just fire you and replace you with someone who'll be grateful to do it for less money and longer hours just to have a job. Hard times are when you have to force yourself out of bed to go to a job you hate, working for people you're smarter than, because at least you have a job and the alternative is worse.

You're on your, what, fifth, sixth, vacation in the last 3 months? I haven't taken a real, honest-to-shit VACATION trip in 10 years. My wife and I have been lucky at best to get a long weekend roadtrip in once a year. My vacation days are really just staycation days where I don't have to go to work. You act like spending 36 hours on the Gulf Coast Redneck Riviera is a hardship, and that creature you married must be sooo jet-lagged after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on her Marie Antoinette Tour of Spain. I guess after all this vacation time you'll need a vacation in.....Marxist Vineyard. Yup, headed to Massachusetts as soon as you can get away from those vile, evil, blue collar Red Staters down south....

And trust me, I have never (and likely never will get to) enjoy anything with the name Wagyu associated with it. However, if I wanna skip a car payment & risk repossession, I can get a special raised-in-Australia Greg Norman Signature Wagyu Steak Selection from the Saks Fifth Avenue website....and get two 12-ounce strips, two 12-ounce ribeyes, and two 8-ounce petite filets for a mere $300, overnighted to me.

Goin' on Staycation...

In a couple weeks, I get to take the first of my two weeks vacation for this year. For a week, I won’t have to get up at 2:30AM, I won’t have to swelter in a 100-degree dungeon surrounded by screaming machinery and the foul stench of hydraulic fluid, rotten milk, and diesel fumes, I won’t have to shout to be heard, and I won’t have to spend 8 hours a day wanting to beat a co-worker to death with a milk crate.

Where will I go on my vacation?

Will I go to the tourist Mecca of Orlando to follow the herds through the Disney and Universal Studios attractions? Will I go to Scotland and hike the Highlands like I’ve always dreamed? Will I bask in the sun on the white sands of a beach on Maui? Will I wrestle a kangaroo in the Australian Outback? Will I go back up to Maine and nibble on lobster as I watch the moose trample by?

Nope. I’m going on Staycation.

A what?

A staycation, according to several definition sources, is where one stays in the immediate vicinity of one’s home on holidays, ostensibly to just relax at home or to enjoy the sights and scenes in the local area that one may overlook during the year. I hasten to add to that & expand it to mean that the economy is so screwed that people just can’t afford to go anywhere or do much of anything that isn’t pretty cheap.

If I were to fly to Maine for a week in August, the flight (according to a quick check of Travelocity and the Roaming Gnome) could be done two ways. If we went from Charleston, SC to Bangor, ME it’s $729.00 per person, but if we went out of Atlanta (a six-hour drive) and flew into Boston (4 ½ hours from Bangor) it’s only $256.00 per person. By the same token, I checked directly with Delta’s website and it’s $757.00 per person to go Charleston to Bangor, and $228.00 from Atlanta to Boston. Now factor in a thousand dollars for the local-owned hotel (not even a name-brand hotel…those were $1400.00), and we’d need a car rental too. Call that $270.00 at Budget for the smallest thing on wheels.

Now, you have to show up 3 or 4 hours early for the strip search and shoe exam and retina scan and ID check for 5 forms of ID, and then you still get jacked extra money on top of your tickets for surcharges like aisle seat, window seat, or for having checked baggage. And you can only carry an eye-dropper full of any liquids in your carry-on bag. Forget about getting a snack or anything for free, either. Peanuts were outlawed in the Great Nut Allergy Crisis of the 1990’s, and possession of a nut or nut by-product is tantamount to smuggling a WMD onto the plane to murder all 300 passengers who may be allergic to nuts.

Conversely, the 1100 or so miles to Bangor from my place in Walterboro would take about 3 tanks of gas in our Saturn ION, with 13 gallons at $4.00 a gallon being $52.00 a tank for $156.00 in gas to drive the 18 hours up there, and about $40.00 in road & bridge tolls. Looks like it’d be cheaper to drive to Maine and spend 36 hours in the car.

And y’know, a week toodling around the coast of Maine (another tank or two) is still cheaper by far than dropping $71.00 a person for a single day pass to Disney (and another $71.00 to do Epcot), and $68.00 for Sea World, although Sea World has a special Flex Plan that allows you admission to six parks, including Busch Gardens and Universal Studios in addition to Sea World, for $280.00. Parking will cost another twenty or so bucks at each park. By comparison, Carowinds is a steal at 36 bucks a pop and 10 bucks to park if you buy the tickets online.

Oh, crap….you still have to EAT too. If you don’t mind bagels and fruit, you can scavenge at the hotel lobby before 9:00 to take care of breakfast, but call it three squares a day out on the town. Cha-CHING!

So, I’m staying home. Target shooting in the back yard is $13.00 for a box of 50 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition. A drive to the beach and back will cost me lunch and maybe ¼ tank of gas. A matinee at a movie isn’t so much providing you don’t partake of the $10.00 Jujube’s, $20.00 Coke, and $30.00 popcorn. I’ll sleep in. Sleeping in, well, that’s utterly priceless in and of itself, that rare commodity that I shall indulge in most decadently.

Actually, I oversimplify things. My stepson will be visiting from Arizona for the week, and we’ll be doing all sorts of things with him, including a day at the beach, a day at the movies, and possibly a trip to the zoo. But there’s always that other week I have stored up…