A few interesting emails came in this morning. One was from Denali regarding an email she was going to send but then reconsidered. The email she wanted to send would have been redundant, anyway, since we'd talked about it's contents yesterday, but I appreciate the followup anyhow. The other was from my HotorNot subscription, informing me that my payment had been rejected.
Throughout history, people have used relay signals to transmit urgent messages. We came up with jungle drums, smoke signals, lookout tower fires, the pony express, and on and on all the way up to today's internet. On the Great Wall of China, smoke or fires were used to alert neighboring towers that there was danger approaching, so the word could be spread quickly. One can only imagine the feeling of being the final link in the chain, seeing that nearby fire and knowing that danger is coming from too far away to see, but close enough to be afraid.
In this case, that one is me. I've been waiting for my credit card to be rejected for some time now. I'd like to think of it as an American right-of-passage, or another pre-employment birthing contraction, but sadly I'm smart enough to recognize that it's merely an effect of the crushing mundanity of miserable financial planning. So I go trembling to my online account summary, forced at last to face up to the past couple of months; to pay the piper, as it were.
One could only come to the conclusion that the piper is either the busiest man in showbiz, or he's got one hell of an agent. In no particular order, I'm:
Stunned! to see just how much debt has accumulated.
Shocked! by the penalties and additional fees WellsFargo has charged me.
Amazed! by how my credit limit has magically extended itself.
Horrified! when I fully realize just how fucked fucked can be.
Naturally, I do what anyone in my position would do - ignore the whole thing and pop off for a drink.
It's on the way to the cafe that I noticed my physiological advance-warning systems had activated. Shortness of breath, stomach cramps or nausea, clenched jaw, and a very narrow perspective... why it's my old friend primal instincts dropping by for a visit, uninvited, as usual. Mentally, I thanked the hot girl I hadn't noticed for tipping me off that something was wrong and immediately began to de-anxiety myself. Being distressed over debt was one thing, but going blind to beauty was unthinkable. Since by then I was entering the cafe, the easiest refocus was to order some coffee.
Almost thwarted by the sleepy-looking European, who aborted my engrossed thinking of what to order by instantly guessing exactly what I wanted, I was saved from re-anxiety by having my fingers scalded by the house coffee which for some infernal reason was always ensured to be at white-hot-magma temperatures. Yet somewhere between the pain of my fingers and the search for a sugar packet, I found my muse and my solution.
Donald Trump. That's right, I said it. The Donald. A man who has seen debt so deep his accountant took a bathysphere to work. A personality who defies understanding. An economic force of nature who simultaneously represents the best of capitalism while clearly circumscribing the entirety of garish. If this creature can escape the suffocating death of debt, so can I, and no fiddle-faddling logic or reason will convince me different.
Posted by Matt at August 25, 2004 09:35 AM