an iced twat.

What is excess? This is a question that I ask myself a lot lately. It could just be working in the service industry, it could just be living in a town where 80% of the people you see on a daily basis are just here for a week or two. It could also be from handling other people’s money all day and looking over at the magazine rack full of wasted paper.
So here are the things I wonder, what makes the people with money do what they do with the money that they have? How old is old enough? Under what conditions would you sell out? What exactly is selling out?
Chris Rock had this bit about rich vs. wealthy. He said that Shaq is rich and the man that gives Shaq his paycheck is wealthy. Right on Chris! I thought about this yesterday when I had to make burritos for a wealthy family that came into the burrito stand. They were horrible, but then, that might just be holding their wealth against them. No, they were actually pretty bad, obnoxious, oblivious, demanding, rude. It was not fun, and at the end one of them mentioned off handedly something about leaving a tip. I was immediately furious with them. Off course I need the money, but I didn’t want their money. I kept my mouth shut, and they put their money into the tip jar, and a part of me died I am sure. Do you ever think about how money rules us? Or power I guess, but really that is all money is to the wealthy, it is just power. Power that they use to buy elections, power that they use to buy people off, power that they use to control everything that they want. It is so sickening and sad to think that it is this cycle that we can not ever break out of. Because when it comes down to it, I need that money to help my family, don’t we all? And that is the only reason I do a lot of the things that I do, just like the rest of us.
I was thinking about the 60’s all summer. I was not alive for the 60’s. it is probably unfair of me to even talk about the 60’s since I wasn’t there. But when I hear people talk about the 60’s, when I read about it in books, or watch a documentary about it, or I see pictures from the time, it makes me feel this mixed feeling of excitement and sadness. The idea that there was a counter culture that stood for something, that there was protesting and fighting and demonstrating all in the name of a better place to live, that sounds so great. But what happened? Where did it go that belief in change? Why can’t that ever work? How sad it would be to see the most prominent people fighting for a better life for all of us gunned down.
I was reading an article about the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales. He sounds like a good man. The first thing he did when he moved into office was cut his wages in half, and that caused the rest of his cabinet to do so as well. He wants things to change, he grew up in poverty and climbed to the top, not because he wanted a better life for himself, but because he wanted a better life for all of the people in the country and he was committed to delivering that life to those people. But I wonder, how long can it last? Of course the US makes him out to sound like a criminal and a lunatic, but of course he seems crazy to us, he is trying to break down barriers that keep people in power safe.
I don’t know guys, I just feel like every time someone comes along to get our hopes up, they are squashed and their message is left to be watered down, and their faces are turned into posters to be hung on dorm room walls. Like a reminder to all the fresh young minds, “you want freedom, but you want money more.”
I can not wait to be on my bike.
lovematthew