... About Stimulating the Economy

Reader, you know that guy who does those late-night infommercials about how if you give him a bunch of money he'll teach you how to get the government to give you a bunch of money? He wears a smoking jacket with dollar signs all over it and prances around the Washington monument like a loon? You know who I'm talking about, the guy who looks like a cross between Bill Nye and Woody Allen?

I hate that guy.

And I'm SO happy that I finally got a chance to prove him wrong. Even without forking over my hard-earned cash to learn his "invaluable methods!" to "achieve! real! financial! success!", I managed to trick the government into literally giving me free money. And unlike that greedy sonuvabee, I'm going to tell you how I did it. You don't have to pay me anything or buy my yet-to-be-published book (pay me money and buy my yet-to-be-published book). I'll tell you exactly how I tricked the government into sending me $600 last week.

I paid my taxes.

I know what you're thinking, Reader. Why in the world would any right-minded citizen pay taxes? Well, lemme tell you, doing your civic duty pays off. So I decided to do my civic duty once again and spend my $600 like President Bush asked me to, to help 'stimulate the economy.'

Now I'm a good girl with high morals, and am generally opposed to stimulating things before marriage. But I am also a law-abiding citizen and understand the importance of respecting the office of the President (even if respect for the person who locks himself in that office to, Iuhno, play the Wii for six hours a day? is waning), so I girdled my loins and drove to the one place where I could be guaranteed to spend obscene amounts of money - Target.

Target and I have a love/hate relationship. I always walk in with a purpose - today I am buying shampoo, today I am buying socks, etc. I love that I can get these little necessities at a good price. But Target hates it when I leave with only the item(s) I intended on purchasing. So the Powers That Be fill up my little red cart with all sorts of stuff that I never knew I needed. But once I spot them, waiting for me to rescue them from their retail shelf-prison, these poor homeless items must be mine!

That is not to say that I always buy frivilous or useless things. They all have some sort of logical purpose. Once I went to Target for mascara and came home with a little cabinet and storage totes for all of my toiletries. Did I know I needed something like that before I passed the aisle it was in? No. But I'm glad I have it now - it's a much better system for keeping my makeup, lotions, and hair stuff organized than my old method, which was basically throwing it all in a basket and never finding what I wanted.

But I still always feel a little bit guilty, no matter how productive my purchase turns out to be. It's the cheapskate in me. So I couldn't bring myself to spend all of the government money. Even though it was totally free and should therefore be totally guilt-free, my heart about stopped when the register passed the $100 mark. Because, after all, I don't want to be one of those people who become consumed by their posessions. Like Edward Norton at the beginning of "Fight Club". What a sad life that would be, sitting home alone every night, surrounded by all your fancy stuff but with no one to share it with. When you can't sleep you console your loneliness by watching late night infommercials for fitness equipment and kitchen gadgets and -

Ooooooh! A Magic Bullet! Gotta get me one of those!