Morality for Dummies

Rock band arrived in the mail today, so Kelly and I can finally get the Wyld Stallyns World Domination tour going. I called Death so I can have the bass, and I think Kelly's Station on drums, so guitar is still up for grabs. I'm guessing Alex Winter is free....unless Gord or Amanda want to step in.

I have been missing work lately. Not the office job, the mind numbing boredom of my cubicle is nothing to wax nostalgic about. And I don't miss the customer interaction of the bookstore job, but good god do I miss the people I worked with. And being surrounded by books. Except for the crappy customers whining about US prices, that was the best job. I can't believe the whole US pricing thing still bothers me, but I'll just blog about it til it goes away.

Here's the deal with US prices. The only people who can legally produce a book are the publishers. Most publishers are in the US, they set the price, and since they're the only ones who can produce the product, they can set whatever damn price they want. The market value of the Canadian dollar means shit to them. So there you have it. Buy Canadian, or stop whining. Oh, and because of all the whining about the high cost of books, Raincoast Books (the publishers who did the Canadian editions of Harry Potter) is no longer even publishing, so thanks for that. If it needs to be explained in simpler terms, here's Economics for Dummies:

Things cost money.

If you want things, you have to pay for them or steal them.

That's it. You can negotiate the price of a car or a house, but that's about it. You can steal a car, but it's risky. Regardless of what The Riches and Opportunity Knocks would have us believe, I don't think it's possible to steal a house. Not for long, anyway.
You can download music, and if you're stealing from Metallica, good on you (except you have shitty taste in music, but those guys are tools and no one should pay for their music), but it is still stealing, and you should feel a little bit bad about that. Not a lot bad, cause people like Madonna and Coldplay certainly aren't hard up for money. Feel bad if you steal from the broke musicians who don't have a private jet. (Morality for Dummies)

Everything else costs what it costs and whining about it is a waste of time. The discussion about the price of an item is one that should happen in your own head. You should not say to yourself 'Hey, hey, the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar. I guess I'll spend recklessly and purchase everything I see, WOOHOO!' If you say this to yourself, odds are you are an idiot.

You ask yourself, 'How badly do I want/need this item?' and "can I afford to pay X amount of dollars for said item?'. The answers to those 2 questions will determine whether or not you make the purchase. You do not scream at/throw books at/otherwise abuse the employees of the store because you forgot to have the above conversation with yourself. Retail staff should be allowed to give Time Outs to customers and if they won't abide by it, call in the British nannies.

That said - Mariana, Kristy, Sara, Heidi, Linda, Mike, Alex (congrats on making Vancouver!) - I miss you guys. And it's not just the total isolation of Montreal talking, I swear.