Things That Really Suck (part I)

Everybody has their list of things that really suck. You know, not necessarily terrible or evil things, things that just, well, suck. Here are some from my list -- please send me yours.

Terrorists. Terrorists really suck. Religious terrorists, state terrorists, they all suck. Malevolent dictators suck. Leaders who say "Fight to the Death" and then slip out of town suck. So do the ones who hide in caves. Don't get me started.

Getting old. You'll have to trust me on this one - getting old sucks. I got my quarterly billing notice from my life insurance company the other day, and I noticed the amount billed jumped up by 35%. Gotta be a mistake, I thought, so I called their Customer Service number. The pleasant-sounding women who answered took my information and brought up my account on her computer. "Sir," she said, "Did you recently turn (a certain age)?" Aw geez. Financially it would have been a better deal to die last year, apparently. Higher ROI, for sure. Gonna remember that next time, just to show 'em who's boss.

Speculative Bubbles (a.k.a. "irrational exuberance"). Why do speculative bubbles suck?  Simply put, because they encourage otherwise sensible people to make really stupid business and investment decisions. The Internet Bubble was a great example: People joined companies with no sound business plan, providing products and services to other companies with no sound business plans, and a few lucky ones were bought out by Fortune 500 companies that did not want to miss out. Who survived, really? Amazon, eBay and Yahoo. Did I miss anyone?

Greed There's no way around this. Greed sucks (I mean, of course, other people's greed, not my own. I'm just not very good at it). My theory is around ten thousand or so people made a ton of money off the Internet speculative boom, not substantially more. Out of 300 million people in the USA alone, that ain't a helluva lot. Some say this is just sour grapes on my part. Really hard to tell, although I'm pretty sure had I been one of the 10,000 I wouldn't be writing this now, would I?

Lousy Drivers C'mon! It isn't really that hard, provided you put down the newspaper, put away your Mascara, stay with traffic and maybe pay attention to what's going on around you. Right now it is popular to make cell phones the scapegoat. New York State has banned the use of hand-held phones. You can still argue with your girlfriend/wife/friends while driving. Your kids are still fully allowed, by state law,  to barrage you with the inane "are we there yet?" question over and over and over from the moment you get started. And no state in the Union, to my knowledge, has a law against "driving while stupid."  But hold a cell phone & you're busted, Mister.