Hello Friday,
You’ve started off kind of suckily. I don’t have a lot to say to you right now.
Well, nothing G-rated anyway. So –

Oh, wait. There is one thing though: People who promise to show you how to get rich. The Donald Trumps of this world with their silver tongued prose and their Why We Want You to be Rich books.

I hate the title of this book. I hate everything it purports to be. This is exactly, exactly, why it’s all gone down the toilet now. Because everyone is obsessed with being rich and not as fervent about doing a good job, or adding value to people’s lives.

I’m no hippie but I’m not sure capitalism is the least sinister of the economic principles anymore.

Why? Because we don’t seem to have an “Off” button. I like pretty shoes, plush hotels and sparkly trinkets as much as the next guy, or girl. But these are not things that are owed me. They are not my right. Unadulterated pleasure is not my right. We always go too far. Why do we always go too far?

Gold toilets, gargantuan buildings, dolphins flown halfway around the world, 100million dollar football players. It’s obscene. And it always costs someone else. Someone who didn’t win the geographical lottery and find himself born in the right place, at the right time. It always costs that poor schmuck. So that he can’t even begin to think about climbing the ladder of prosperity. He is so far beneath the even the bottom rung he can’t even be sure that prosperity even exists. And we don’t care. We gorge ourselves on hedonism and unfettered excess. We grow fat and turgid with it and our focus remains on how to maintain the status quo.
The same people who are in this list are the ones responsible for this despair

What does that have to do with us? With me? These are obviously grotesque examples cruelty and avarice but scale it back a little bit (or a lot) and we are all there. Bigger, shinier, sleeker: it’s what we all want.

Everyone is always peddling something that’s really nothing. You get the life coaches, the social media gurus, the motivational speakers. It’s all vapor and sleight of hand. No substance. You see these people all over Twitter. But where are the tweets about how to be a better human being? I’d retweet those. I want to be one. A better human being. As long as it didn’t cost me anything.

Is it possible to do both? To be a rich, successful, non-douchebag? Do we need to attain saintliness of Bono-esque proportions to balance out the karma?
This is all because Rafael Nadal lost his quarter-final to Juan Martin Del Jackass today. I am not pleased. And, despite everything I’ve just said, I still want an iPhone, Universe. Call me.