Month: November 2018

Diamonds Are Valuable?

diamonds

Last week, Henry Winston Co. bought a diamond for $50,000,000.00.  Holy crap!  That’s a lot of zeroes for what is essentially a barbeque briquette.  (FYI – diamonds are really just uber-squashed coal.)  The auction took less than five minutes, and the price was a record for “one of the world’s greatest diamonds.”  Clearly, I don’t run in those circles because, even though I’ve heard of the Hope Diamond and the Koh-i-Noor, I had no idea this little bauble existed.  (And, honestly, in a couple of weeks I’m going to forget all about it.)  It’s not that I am so airy-fairy (artsy-fartsy?) that I’m not impressed by 50 million bucks – like most (honest) people — I am, but, the truth is I don’t value jewelry.

This isn’t a judgement call.  I have no philosophical problem with Meryl Streep wearing a bracelet worth twice the price of my Toyota or George Clooney giving Amal a rock that could, theoretically, feed a Malawian village from now until the end of time.  If that’s what they value – so be it.  It’s just not my thing.

To put this into perspective, I don’t value knives, either.  (I’m not a chef.)  Or wrenches.  (I’m not a mechanic.)  Or the going rate for a PGA golfer.  (I’ve never been a fan.)  My point is that value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  So, who the hell beholds 50 million dollars’ worth of anything?   To be perfectly honest, I can’t even comprehend 50 million!  Dollars, cats, rats, one-eyed waddling penguins?  That’s just too many to count.  Do they fill five football fields?  Or laid end to end, do they stretch in a line from Paris to Marseille?  (Frankly, for that kind of money – somebody better get laid!)

Oscar Wilde once said a cynic was “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”  Luckily, our world hasn’t totally succumbed to that — yet.   The stuff most people value – friends, family, love, laughter, etc. – still don’t have a price tag.

“OMG! WalMart is having a sale on parents.  I’ve had these ones for years, and they’re gettin’ kinda old and grouchy.  I think I’ll go down and pick up a new pair.”

“I can’t wait for Black Friday to get a bunch of cheap friends to come to my Christmas party.”

“How much for dinner and a movie?”

That last one might be a little too close to home for some people … but … you get my meaning.

Jobs In The 21st Century

jobs

Like the elves of Middle Earth, jobs are leaving these shores and they’re not coming back.  These days, if you are a travel agent, cashier, bank teller, journalist, or in any one of the other 1,001 person-to-person professions of the 20th century – you’d better start looking over your shoulder.  In the next decade, your paycheque is going to go the way of the dinosaur.  Quite frankly, blacksmiths will have better employment opportunities than you will.  Luckily, however, economics is a survival of the fittest science, and it’s already creating a shedload of new careers.  Here’s just a small sampling of the new jobs being created in the 21st century.  The crazy thing is – for the most part — these are real.

Harassment Officer –This is the only job in history that’s totally dependent on the employee NOT doing the job.  Think about it!  If a Harassment Officer actually puts a stop to harassment in the workplace, they’re out of a job.

Social Media Consultant – Apparently, there are still people on this planet who don’t know how Facebook, Instagram and Twitter work.

Millennial Generation Expert – Yes, companies hire people to try and figure out what makes their younger employees tick.  My best guess is they wander around the office telling everybody under 30 they’re “awesome” and then, once a week, they give out trophies.

Personal Shopper – This job has been around for a while, but it still amazes me that some people hire people to buy presents for the friends and relatives they can’t be bothered going to Walmart for.

Bikini Waxer – Back in the day, personal grooming was – uh – personal. Now we get professionals in on the plot.  My question is how do these people learn their trade?  Where are the schools?

Cloud Services Specialist – I have no idea what the hell these people do.

Activist – These are the people who make a career out of being pissed off.

Grant Writer – These are the people who convince rich people to give them money to pay the people who’ve made a career out of being pissed off.

Uber Driver – Simplest job in the world.  All you have to do is go to Uber.com and sign up.  According to one person I talked to, Uber doesn’t even check to see if you actually have a car.

Influencer – We used to call these people shills. They worked carnivals and sideshows, trying to entice the local folk into spending their money on rigged games and cheap gadgets.  These days, they prowl the Internet and confine their activities to promoting perfumes and overpriced designer clothes.

Ethical Sourcing Officer – These are the people who make sure the Asian sweatshops aren’t beating the children who make those overpriced designer clothes.

Jean Ripper – I don’t know whether this is a real job or not, but somebody’s got to be ripping those overpriced designer jeans.

But my two favourites are:

Content Creator – These are the people who have YouTube channels, podcasts and — the grandmother of them all — blogs.  Yep, people actually get paid for wasting your time.

Content Reader – These are people who spend their days checking the contents of YouTube channels, podcasts and — the grandmother of them all — blogs.  Yep, people actually get paid for wasting their own time.

Why Young People Are Grouchy!

bored

After years of research, I’ve discovered why young people are grouchy all the time.  It’s pretty simple, really.  They’re bored out of their skulls.  The problem is, despite the entire 21st century lying at their feet like a cornucopia of earthly delights, they have so many politically correct rules of engagement that they’re scared to touch it.  Let me explain.

They can’t play games or even watch them.  There is a myth that young people like board games, but I think this is just spin (“lie” is such a hard word.)  Think about it!  Games are, by definition, competition, and when you have competition you have winners and – OMG – losers.  This is the Anti-Christ of the 21st century.  If an activity isn’t win/win, it just doesn’t happen.

They can’t watch television — except The Handmaid’s Tale.  The trigger warnings in Game of Thrones alone would fill an encyclopedia (that’s Google for old people.)  Even the blandest of the bland, the antique sitcom, Friends — a program so inoffensive it can’t even be called vanilla (that suggests way too much flavour) is a minefield of politically incorrect thought.  Nope, TV is out!

They can’t go to the zoo.  Animals in captivity?  That’s just crazy talk.

They can’t go to a museum.  If the single statue of some dead guy is offensive, a whole building full of history could cause apoplectic shock.

They can’t read books published before 1980.  In a time when To Kill a Mockingbird has been censored, Huck Finn rewritten and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Screw banned, we’re not many days away from politically correct mobs ransacking libraries and burning the books in the streets.  Sad as it may seem, Fahrenheit 451 isn’t fiction anymore; it’s a training manual.  So reading is a no-no!

They can’t go to the movies.  Here is an industry that has, on several occasions, confessed that it is a whitewashing, cultural appropriating, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-Muslim monopoly, controlled by misogynistic old white men.  What’s left?  Michael Moore’s “Ain’t It Awful?” documentaries — and even the politically correct are fed up with that guy.

They can’t dine out unless the restaurant grows its own organic food in a hydroponic biosphere in the back garden.  Even quinoa and avocados, the meat and potatoes of contemporary life, are suspect.  The carbon footprint that brings ancient grains and Aztec fruit to the modern table is just too deep to be tolerated.

And, of course, the super biggie:

They can’t flirt.  Don’t even go there!

And that, boys and girls, is why young people are so 24/7 bitchy!