The Opinionated Bastard

Club Cards Must Die

I really hate those stupid club cards all the stores have now. First off, I think they are totally inane. Who do they think they’re fooling? The card is free, and the groceries are pretty much the same prices they’ve always been. Basically, they are just blackmailing you into giving them your name and address because if you don’t, they’ll charge you $4.34 more for your box of Oreos.

Not only that, but if you’re dumb enough to put your real phone number on the form, you’ll start getting telemarketing calls. Even worse, because the store keeps a record of all your purchases, that record can be subpoenaed by the police, or God help you, a lawyer. There was a case recently of a guy in Tukwila, Washington who got sent to jail for arson, because his Safeway Club Card showed him buying matches and lighter fluid. You might think that the police would have also noticed the 2 steaks, bottle of wine and the charcoal on the ticket as well, but I guess the police in Tukwila weren’t that swift. Eventually, they caught the real arsonist and had to release the Bar-B-Que guy.

The worst of all is the Barnes & Noble card, because it’s not even free! I guarantee that whatever idiot thought that one up has an MBA, because in my experience, only someone with an MBA could possibly be stupid enough to think that charging customers for the privilege of shopping in their store is a good idea.

I have this recurring fantasy where said MBA suffers a slow painful death because his key chain is so big from all these stupid club cards that it cuts off the circulation in his leg, which gets gangrenous and kills him. After death, he’s sent to Hell with $.99. That would be enough to buy him a bottle of drinking water if only he had his “Satan Club” card. Since he doesn’t, its $1.05, and he doesn’t have enough money. Meanwhile, his phone rings continuously with people trying to sell him satellite dishes even though he already owns one, switch his long distance carrier, or refinance his house even though in Hell every time you refinance your house, somehow your payment goes up.

Yeah, that would teach him.

Unfortunately, MBAs are like gophers, you kill one and another rodent moves in the next day. That’s why I now use:

Elwood Blues 1060 West Addison Chicago, IL 60613-4397

as my address. (That’s the address of Wrigley Field for the culturally illiterate). For the phone number, I use the phone number of the FBI: 202-324-3000, and for email, I use the FBI address for reporting spam: UCE@FBI.GOV. If you don’t want to go to jail, I suggest you do the same. Already have a Club Card? Get a new one! They’re free!

An Arab Spring?

Meanwhile, in news that’s actually important, it seems like the President’s foreign policy gamble has paid off. Personally, I’m not that surprised. President Bush bet on democracy, and that seemed like a pretty safe bet to me. For all that many of these countries are Muslim, given a choice, people are going to choose running their own lives over having their lives run for them by some guy in a turban. Of course, the mainstream media were surprised, but we all know what idiots they are: they missed that whole “fall of communism” thing too.

Still, lots of good news. In the last few months:

Afghanistan had elections. In the Ukraine, mass protests foiled an attempted take over after a rigged election. Iraq had real elections, and Iraqis started becoming more optimistic about their future. One of the members of the Arab League said, “The time for dictators and fools has passed”, in reference to the Iraqi elections. Saudi Arabia had elections. Egypt has announced that they’re going to have real elections. In Lebanon, Syria has announced that they’re going to pull out after mass protests. In Kyrgyzstan, mass opposition to dictatorship looks like it may topple their government.

It seems like there’s a breath of fresh air blowing through the world.

Could we see the end to tyranny in our lifetimes? I can only hope.

You know, it’s interesting to me the significant turn our foreign policy has made since 9/11. The right has become the side to follow if you believe in the great American truths: freedom, democracy and equality, while the left has become the party of dictatorships in the name of “peace”. Like always, our foreign policy is a mish-mash of idealism and pragmatism, but it seems to me like the right has decided that the belief that “a right wing dictatorship is better then a left wing dictatorship” is ultimately a delusion. So to the right, idealism has become pragmatism.

Unfortunately, the left hasn’t grasped this yet, believing that somehow left wing dictatorships aren’t as bad because they’re in the name of the “people”. I attribute this in part because they still believe in the failed philosophies of communism and socialism: that somehow, giving the government more power over people’s lives will make them more free.

Or perhaps they’re just overly dominated by the crowd that believes that if we all hold hands and sing Koom-By-Yah, that peace and harmony will result throughout the world. You know, the people who wear black and stand in front of City Hall on weekends, presumably right after watching Hotel Rwanda and tsking about how “someone really should have done something”. Yeah, dictators love those Koom-By-Yah types. They like the crunching sounds they make when they drive their tanks over their squirming bodies.

Anyways, best wishes for the rest of the world this month. Let’s hope all the nations of the world become democracies, so that they too will have to carry around these annoying little plastic cards in case they want to buy a package of Oreos.