Where's my bailout?

MY AMATEUR FINANCIAL SOAPBOX
So let's get this shit straight. It's no longer a bailout but instead an investment. Initially it was going to be used to help out banks and it seems it has... a little. And it was also supposed to be used to help out folks with bad mortgages (more on that in a second). Ultimately it was going to bailout, yes bailout, financial institutions and now it will likely change. The Big 3 automakers are now bleeding, no erupting, money out the front door and need help. Meanwhile the likes of Toyota, Honda, etc., seem to be doing okay. The Big 3 are dieing a slow death because, in my opinion, they have been off the back for so long. Rather than making economical cars and pursuing hybrid technology, they continued to make "Bummers", Escalades, and Suburbans like it was going out of style. Now they are in trouble, behind the times, and look to us the tax payer to help them out. Many financial experts believe that we should help them, while others think we should let them fail. It seems that the only way for someone (in this case a company) to change or evolve is to hit rock bottom. The Big 3, it seems, have been on standard operating procedure for way too long. Would they change their ways? Since gas is relatively "cheap" will they be aggressive with hybrid and alternative fuels? Maybe we should let them fail, reorganize and come back leaner, meaner, more aggressive, and perhaps creative. You can't teach an old dog new tricks but perhaps bankruptcy could change them.

MORTGAGE
Buying people's bad mortgage is a bad idea. I say this because I, along with millions of others, went the appropriate route. My eyes weren't bigger than my wallet. I didn't buy a $700,000 with no money down. Nor did I state I made $100,000 a year when I clearly didn't. I asked questions. "What's my mortgage payment now?" Or, "What will it be in 5 years?" So to the people who went that crazy route and thought things would be sweet, even though common sense would tell you it would eventually suck after a few years, don't expect a gift. I mean another another gift.

And so it goes. The American way to "cure" a problem: Throw as much money as possible at a problem and hope it gets better. Put a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

CONCLUSION
So look, I can fill out the 2-page application for money. I would love to have an extra $2,000 to do stuff around the house, get my teeth whitened, get a pedicure, buy some socks, and get a 1 terabyte firewire external hard drive.

Stacks, packaging and junk mail

CURSE OF THE STACK
I don't know about you but stacks have become a normal part of my life. They infiltrate my home, garage, office and sometimes my car. How do they get there? Why can't I get rid of them. Without question stacks are my doing. I get things in the mail, bring things home from work, accumulate things.

My "purge" process is simple really: Do an initial "weed" through and move the stuff I don't want into the "trash" stack. Next I take the stuff I want and make the "keep" stack. That "keep" stack is then moved to a place such as the location above. There it sits for days on end. Lonely, heart broken, yearning to perhaps be filtered again and maybe moved to a better spot. After a week the "keep" stack should be considered trash shouldn't it? Not in my world. I filter it again and make yet another stack, which then is joined by other pieces because by this time, new material has been brought into the situation. Pick it up, move it, move it back, add new things, and on and on. It's an evil cycle an eventually all of it gets thrown out because of frustration. Then, of course, a couple days after I chuck the remnants of the "keep" stack I usually find myself looking for something that was tossed.

LOOK AT THE HIPS ON THAT BOTTLE
Look, as a graphic designer I love packaging. I am not alone either. How many of us have bought things based on the packaging? Yeah, I thought so. I'll buy a bottle of wine because of the cool label! I am convinced that if the label design is slick, the product must be good too. Look at all the toiletry products with crazy bottle shapes. I guess you have to somehow differentiate your "insert aromatherapy crap name here" from your competitors since most of it is the same, using the same exotic herb from some mysterious place. I buy a tiny, portable stereo for my iPod and the packaging accounts for most of the girth. There's the box of course, the plastic adult-proof sealed thingy that you must machete through, the cardboard protection, the manual, the registration sheet, the remote control and the cardboard box it came in and finally the foam sheet liner that keeps it all in place. The carbon footprint on this $39 electronic bit is mind-boggling.

JUNK MAIL BLUES
"Hey, here's a sweet website you can go to, to get your name off the junk mail-catalog list," says a tree-hugging friend of mine. "Sweet! I'll try it out" I say. I did it. Checked off all the catalogs I get and don't want, all the catalogs I don't want but get and everything in between. Sure enough, I get even more and I still get the ones I supposedly checked off. I half-way think I signed up for more in some mysterious, marketing way.

So now I have too much junk mail, way too much packaging that I throw away (gets recycled... hopefully) and islands of stacks that have just become a part of my life. Funny thing is that I am not alone. Multiply my situation by millions of others and we have a crapload of, well, crap.