Half-assed resolutions aside, there are a number of ways you can examine the success of your new year thus far. If you don’t believe in ‘starting the year off wrong’ since our concept of years/the calendar is completely fabricated (or other various reasons), good for you. You don’t have to superstitiously worry about hidden omens in your day-to-day life which predict the happiness or unhappiness of the next 12 months. For the rest of us, here are 10 reasons you know that 2012 is off to a bad start.
 

Fighting Through New Years

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While everyone else is partying and having fun, you and your mother are tearfully screaming at one another in the kitchen. Or maybe you and your significant other can be found in the back of the party, quietly sulking as everyone else tries to ignore you (friends have already tried to cheer you up to no avail; they were scared away from the bad and back into the party). It’s a bad sign to be The Sulker at any party, let alone the one that’s supposed to be the first giant extravaganza of fun and happiness in 2012. If you’re kicking off the new year by emitting negative vibes to everyone around you, just go home. Don’t kill yourself, but go home if you aren’t going to at least try and enjoy it. For some, trying to improve things may even worsen the situation. If you’ve ever had a significant other who sometimes embarks on a spiteful hellpath to make you feel terrible about every positive attempt you make, you can relate to this — and should probably get rid of them as soon as possible. If you dump them before the party ends, you can even pick up where you should have left off and actually experience fun for a few hours. 
 

Waking up Sober on New Year’s Day

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While waking up without a hangover that could murder God might be counted as a good thing, it can also be an indicator of a terrible year to come.  Assuming for a minute that you’re not Mormon or a teetotaller, New Years Eve comes in slightly behind “Your Birthday” and “The Day You Got Dumped” as the most drinkingest day of the year.  It is the one day of the year specifically associated with a type of alcohol (champagne), something that even your uptight grandmother will have a glass of at midnight.
 
So if you wake up feeling perfectly spritely on New Years Day, something must be terribly, terribly wrong.  Where the hell were you last night?  Enjoying a refreshing sparkling cider while watching TV at a reasonable volume?  I bet you didn’t even fall over and nearly get arrested while peeing/vomiting in an alleyway.  I bet absolutely no puerile joy-filled irresponsible times were had with friends last night. 

You’ve Already Failed Your Resolutions

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So perhaps you’ve decided that 2012 is going to be the year when you turn your life around.  You have set yourself a stiff list of resolutions that you are determined to keep to.  Much like all the years previous in your life, you set out to make this one different with sheer will power and careful planning.  Look out 2012 — here comes a thinner, more ambitious you! 
 
As often as you’ve likely failed at your resolutions, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of people with resolutions actually manage to keep them past February.  But you’re more likely in the remaining 80% unless you’ve laid out clear, realistic goals and a schedule for achieving them.  In which case your 2012 is likely off to a bad start because of the near-universal inability to keep promises to yourself. But don’t be too hard on yourself…unless you want to make matters worse. Sulking or being upset about broken resolutions is going to increase your level of self-loathing, not productivity or success.

Christmas is Over, but You’re Still a Scrooge

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Hate Christmas? So do a lot of people. If you were too immature to suck it up and at least not complain to people who do enjoy the holiday, people most likely ignored you with a bit of patience and ‘they’ll get over it’ attitude. Now that the holidays are over, however, it’s time to drop that Christmas-induced depression and come back to reality. Acting like a scrooge around the holidays may be forgivable, but maintaining that attitude afterwards just makes you a plain old jerk. No one likes those. Unless you’re trying to lose friends and break off connections with people, try to let go of the negativity that’s weighing you down (or at least quit doling it out to others). Maybe you could even be nice to other people on occasion — you’d be surprised at the doors that will open up just from acting kind, or, at the very least, decent.

Multiple Arrests

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Multiple arrests in the past month? You’re doing it wrong. Our incredibly flawed laws and justice system may have roped you into the courtroom on frivolous charges (smoking pot, peeing on the side of the road, bludgeoning a prostitute) once or twice, but you should probably try not to make a habit of it. If you’re continuously caught committing the same offense over and over, you should pick new methods or a different crime. As long as you have no use for your criminal record nor are you concerned with it interfering with your ability to work, this isn’t so bad after all. But for those who woke up on New Year’s day covered in blood in the drunk tank at some random police station while being expected to show up at the office the next day, you should probably brush yourself and move on — with a three drink limit in effect.

Permanent Vacation

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For those of us living in the real world, vacations can only last so long before work demands that we return or a lack of money forces us back into the workforce. While it’s unrealistic to expect anyone to be thrilled with a transition from sipping drinks on the beach to sitting in a cubicle 8 hours a day, the disappointment of returning to the real world should be tempered or at least partially masked. Everyone already knows how miserable you are to be sitting back in front of your old Trinitron; there’s no point in making it known unless you want your bosses to take notice and start narrowing their eyes at you. It’s also a bad sign if you hate your job so much that a small respite has caused you to forsake it entirely, which leaves you ‘working’ in the office after you’ve mentally checked out. It’s bad for productivity, your own personal health, and the future of your job to let your vacation linger on as a long string of small-to-moderate office offenses: showing up late, taking too many days off, making more mistakes than usual, cutting corners, etc.
 

Dumped in Anticipation for Valentine’s Day

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Valentine’s day is coming up. Your significant other cares — but not about you. You’ve been dumped just in time for the holiday, and they’ve either run off with someone else or are thrilled to finally be alone. Whatever the reason, getting the boot right before one of America’s favorite days to consume, consume, consume, is not a great feeling. It leaves you sulking at home while everyone you know is scrambling to do something sweet and impressive as a means of courting the one they want to get sexy with. You may feel like getting dumped is a terrible start for the new year, but you should really be rejoicing: not only will you save money, but there are plenty lonely and horny singles on the cesspool that is OKCupid.

Indicted by the IRS

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That about sums it up. You’re screwed. Now you’re poor forever and the government owns everything in your life, including you. 2012 certainly sucks the big one, and it’s only just begun.

Existential Crisis

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Already? Put down the Dostoevsky and go outside, please. Existential crises can last for months, years, or even the rest of your life. In fact, it will most likely plague you until you die. Accept it and move on; dwelling on the meaninglessness of your existence is going to make it hard for you to reach all those goals in 2012. Goals? Who cares about goals? Goals don’t mean anything. Nothing means anything.

Having and then cultivating your existential crisis at the beginning of 2012 is a terrible sign of things to come. Get out while you still can, even if it means reading the books on Oprah’s book club list or your old copies of Animorphs, lest you find yourself in a pile of chinese takeout boxes and bedsores at the end of the year.
   

You Care Too Much About Starting the New Year Right

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You should really get over it. Bad stuff happens, good stuff happens, and then other stuff happens. None of it means anything about the future (except for that one about the IRS — if this happens, you have no future). There are no omens, and no psychic foreshadowing. The only foreshadowing that happens in real life is the kind that can be used to alter the future, such as your girlfriend hinting at the idea of seeing other people and then suddenly wanting to actually do it two months later. In a case like this, you can make decisions or start conversations that will help you decide what you want to happen a few months down the line. In a case like ‘New Year’s was bad so this year will suck, too’, you’re being ridiculous and should probably live your life without the pressure of a completely imagined black cloud looming above you. The things that happened in the past happened and are gone. Nothing has happened in the future yet, because it’s the future. What’s going on right now? That’s what your priority should be — not predicting how you’ll feel 12 months from now, reflecting back on a time that hasn’t even happened yet.

 
With 2011 now several weeks behind us, the time comes for us to look ourselves in the mirror and honestly assess our New Year’s Resolutions.  This is likely the time when we’re all thinking “f*ck it, a few extra pounds isn’t that bad, going to the gym is so hard.”  Don’t worry, you’re not alone.  Studies show that somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 out of every 5 resolutions set forth are quickly broken.  We are all failing spectacularly at improving ourselves—but don’t worry, it’s called ‘Life.’ If it gets you down, just meet the rest of us at the bar.  Unless one of course your resolution is to cut back on drinking, in which case we’ll see you there on Thursday when you finally give up.  In celebration of so many hopes and dreams being crushed under the steel boot of apathy and mediocrity over the next few weeks, let’s chronicle some of the resolutions that fail the most frequently and swiftly.   
 

The “Turn My Life Around” Resolution

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We’ve all known someone (perhaps it is you) that, at the dawn of the New Year, realizes their life is a tumbling pile of nothingness inhabited by fear, self-loathing and probably a lot of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes.  The crushing weight of their failure seems too large to be lifted by a few paltry resolutions, so they resolve to simply overhaul their life.  In their mind, the way to act out this goal is simply to act counter to their natural impulses, as these are the impulses that have led him or her to this point in the first place. 

“I’m too lazy to do laundry” becomes “Nope, clean everything!”.  “I should just keep my head down at work” becomes “I will demand a raise and possibly shit on my boss’s desk after hours!”.  The way is so clear, so simple — why didn’t you think of this before? 

Why You Will Ditch It: 
Scientifically, the best and most successful resolutions are ones that are small and highly specific.  This is both huge (“I’m going to change everything”) and incredibly vague (“All of…uhm…those things…”).  It’s simply too huge to be attainable, assuming you can even define what “turn my life around” really means.  Even for those who set specific goals for this life turn around (“I’m going to smoke less, drink less, spend more time with my family, work harder, keep things cleaner, etc…) is setting up too many goals to achieve, much less remember.   
 

Lose Weight

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This is probably the most commonly heard resolution around New Year’s.  Even relatively thin people wouldn’t mind losing an inch or two around the waist.

It’s an unfortunate consequence of a world where completely sane, heterosexual men have been heard saying they don’t think Christina Hendricks is attractive but would be all over Jennifer Aniston. 
 
Why You Will Ditch It: 
If you’re on the husky side of euphemisms for being fat, losing weight actually isn’t that difficult.  It’s losing those last few pounds and keeping them off that’s the trouble.  Long story short, when you start losing weight (which for most of human history was a terrible thing survival-wise), your body starts freaking out, and your hormones conspire to get that weight back.  Not to mention the fact that you’ll likely have to overhaul your diet and start setting aside at least 3-4 hours a week to hit the gym.  The point is, you’re not only combating your own laziness that tells you the gym is too much work and microwave dinners for 3 meals is totally okay, you’re battling millions of years of evolution.  And you’re doing it with a New Year’s Resolution, which is second only to “The Weather” in the list of half-hearted conversation topics.   

Stop Smoking

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We all have vices that we pretend we’d like to drop but secretly wish we could keep doing for the rest of our lives without consequence.  Smoking, along with rampant unprotected sex and black-out drinking, is one of these.  Unfortunately, we are all mortal and so every New Year’s we have to pretend to our parents and friends that we’re totally going to quit smoking.  Soon.  I’m down to only 2-3 a day, really I’m like almost there.   

Over the past few years, it’s even gotten harder and harder to be a smoker.  Good luck finding anywhere inside to smoke, and if you live in certain areas of the country, good luck smoking at all.  When asked if they smoke or how much they smoke, smokers are now required by law to say “Yeah, I really need to quit though it’s terrible.” 

Why You Will Ditch It:
To paraphrase Mark Twain: it’s really easy to quit smoking — I’ve done it hundreds of times.  If you’re trying to quit smoking, your odds of success are in the single digits.  First off, smoking is so incredibly addictive, it’s kind of unbelievable.  Nicotine as a drug leads to addiction in close to 70 to 90 percent of regular smokers.  Compare that with alcohol, where only 2.7% of regular drinkers report a level of alcohol usage indicative of dependance.  In addition, most smokers smoke compulsively: with coffee, with alcohol, after meals, before bed, right after waking up, etc… if you’re quitting smoking, odds are there aren’t many activities in your life that aren’t closely linked to having a cigarette in your hand. 
 
A good smoking cessation plan takes weeks of preparation, and often entails involving friends, family, and support groups in your plan.  Resolving to quit on New Year’s just because the calendar has changed a digit isn’t going to cut it. 

Spend More Time With Friends and Family

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Believe it or not, spending more time with those closest to you ranks as one of the more popular New Year’s Resolutions.  Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re not all shriveled, misanthropic husks of cynicism and give this idea some credence.  It’s a well-studied fact that people derive some of the deepest and longest-lasting joy in life from having a strong and supportive network of friends and family members.  So it’s understandable that people who feel that these things are lacking in their lives would seek them out.  
 
Why You Will Ditch It:
First off, this goal falls into the trap of so many resolutions in that it sounds simple and straight forward, but is actually maddeningly vague.  How much time is enough?  Is some time more valuable than other times? Is spending time playing catch with my son the equivalent of taking him to Disneyland?  Should I spend more time with my family or my friends?  A simple way to fix this would be to set aside some time every week to spend with friends and family, say sitting down to dinner every night and setting a weekly bowling date with buddies.   

While nice, this doesn’t address the second, more serious reason why this resolution gets ditched: if you feel like you’re not spending enough time with your family and friends, there’s likely something else, good or bad, that keeps you from doing this.  Maybe you’re a workaholic, in which case your resolution should focus on not devoting so much time to work (though that might be impossible if you want to keep your job).  Maybe you’re estranged from your family because your parents were abusive and they engendered a lack of an ability to trust that has prevented you from forming meaningful relationships.  In this case your resolution should be to see a therapist.  Or maybe you’re just an insufferable asshole and few people can put up with you for extended periods of time.  In this case your resolution should be to go into the financial industry so you can buy friends.   
 

Get In Shape

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The “lose weight” for people who aren’t fat or don’t want to admit that they’re fat, the “get in shape” resolution usually comes after a fit of wheezing and gulping breaths after climbing a flight of stairs.  It’s usually followed by phrases such as “tone up”, “cardio”, “core strength training” and “protein shake”.    This wonderfully meaningless phrase is basically a way for people who aren’t visibly out of shape to commiserate with those who are.  It is the “oh my god I’m so fat” for people who aren’t women who watch too much TV.     

Why You Will Ditch It: 
For all the same reasons that it’s difficult to get your ass off the couch and lose weight, it’s difficult to get in shape.  You won’t have the same sort of hormonal diet-rage as people who just dropped 30 pounds, but you still have to set an exercise regimen, and keep to it consistently for the rest of your life.  Thick or thin, waking up at 5am to get a three mile run in before work while abstaining from harmful drugs sounds appealing to precisely no one and Mormons.
 
But the worst part, and the reason this resolution is probably dropped more quickly and frequently than losing weight is there’s nothing obviously wrong to begin with.  If you’re a healthy weight, don’t smoke and drink in moderation, no one is going to give you shit about being unable to run three miles in less than 30 minutes.  If you wake up every morning, look in the mirror and are able to honestly say “meh, good enough” all motivation to improve upon that goes out the window.  Though to be fair, if you’re able to do that, your low-stress life will probably have you living longer than a marathoner.   
 

Enjoy Life More

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This is another resolution that shows up with remarkable frequency in polls of people’s goals for the year.  When asked to elaborate, “take it easy” was the winner, showing up in 86% of replies.  “Smell the roses” was a close second with 73% of replies with third place going to “You know, just live, maaaannnn”.  When asked what specific activities ‘Enjoying Life More’ would entail, there were widespread reports of listening to the Grateful Dead and using this resolution as an excuse to drink more.   

Why You Will Ditch It: 
This resolution falls into the awful trifecta of New Year’s Resolutions:  It’s vague, difficult to know when you’ve achieved and the result of so many factors that are nearly impossible to address all at once.  How can you tell if you’re enjoying life more?  Do you keep a daily chart of how often you’ve sniffed some angiosperms?   

On top of all this, there’s usually a reason you feel like you’re not enjoying life and it likely doesn’t have much to do with how easy you take it or how often you take long, thoughtful walks through the woods and admire the foliage.  Odds are if you don’t have much time to enjoy life, it’s because you’re committed to a career or something else that sucks your time.  Losing that thing in order to “enjoy life” more thoroughly will likely be catastrophic for your finances and responsibilities.  Similarly, if you’re not strapped for time but find yourself unable to enjoy life despite a lack of an obvious antagonizing factor, you should probably see a therapist as that’s a classic symptom of depression that isn’t going to be fixed by a simple resolve to feel better about life in some abstract sense.   

Cut Back on/Quit Drinking

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Almost everyone has been hungover at work or during classes, sometimes more than once a week.  While this increases in frequency the younger you are, odds are just about everyone reading this now would like to cut back on drinking a bit, at the very least.  Some of you reading this right now should probably quit drinking altogether.  On top of the long-term damage it can do to your body in the form of increased cancer risks and liver scarring, most of us are just sick of the hazy feeling that comes from a night of even moderate drinking.   

Why You Will Ditch It: 
Alcohol will still be everywhere around you.  You never quite realize until you try to quit or cut back just how many of your activities and friendships revolved around at least some drinking.  Unless you spend a lot of time drinking alone, odds are most of your drinking isn’t a compulsive need, but simply a desperate attempt to make your friends more interesting.  Even the most casual of drinkers is still surrounded by a world where every get together that takes place after 7pm and isn’t Bible Study usually involves a few rounds.   

If you’re a heavy drinker and trying to cut back or quit, the story gets even scarier.  Have a look at this list of symptoms for the condition known as Delirium Tremens.  Long story short, a heavy drinker can expect some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms from insomnia, irregular heartbeat and motherfucking seizures.  You don’t even have to be a heavy drinker, as these symptoms have shown up in patients who drank as little as 20 drinks a week (still a lot but well within a college student’s weekend).  

So even if you muster the willpower to reign in your drinking, you are going to be surrounded by it for what is likely to be the rest of your life, assuming you don’t die from withdrawal.  I give you until Valentine’s Day.   

Get Out of Debt

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In this hip, new second decade of the 21st century, many people are responding to the latest economic fashion trends and resolving to join those cool kids without any debt.  Unsurprisingly, this resolution has become increasingly common in a world where millions of mortgages sit underwater and middle-class wages have stagnated.   

As far as resolutions go, getting out of debt is mercifully specific and entails a definite end-goal which is theoretically feasible given the proper steps.  On top of that, losing your debt is a great way to up your credit score, increase your long-term savings and earnings potentials and the sooner you do it the less money you’ll pay overall.  Especially if your debt is on your credit card. 

Why You Will Ditch It:
Unlike enjoying life, losing weight, spending time with friends and family and pretty much every other resolution, getting out of debt costs a hell of a lot of money.  If you don’t have a lot of disposable income (and if you do, why are you in debt in the first place?), eliminating your debt is going to entail a lot of sacrifices.  You have to make a budget and stick to it.  Every day of every week of every year for what is going to likely be at least three to five years.  And, much like drinking, all around you your friends will continue to buy nice things, eat out frequently and buy cars, houses, and wedding rings, whether they can afford them or not.  And that entire time (again, especially if your debt is on credit cards) you will see your principle shrink by very tiny amounts as you pay off the astronomical interest.  
   
Add to all this the sudden, unexpected expense that will inevitably arise and wipe out 6 months of good finances, and you’re likely to go back to making minimum payments before Martin Luther King Day. 

Get More Sleep

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As far as general things that you can do to improve your health, getting enough sleep comes in near the top of the list (assuming you’re keeping your resolution to quit smoking).  And in this crazy, fast-paced world where we’re pressured to lose weight, enjoy life, spend more time with friends and family, and balance our checkbooks, sleep is often the only area we can afford to cut time out of.  So come New Years, many people resolve to make sleep a priority in an effort to increase health and decrease stress. 

Why You Will Ditch It: 
When faced with two hours of sleep versus finishing a project that is due tomorrow, no one responsible will choose sleep.  As detrimental as long-term sleep deprivation may be to your health, a little bit of grogginess is a small price to pay to get something important done.  And good luck telling your boss/teacher/professor you didn’t finish the assignment because you are making sleep a priority this year.  Getting that extra 40 winks is viewed as a sign of laziness and lack of ambition. 

The big problem here for someone making this resolution isn’t that they aren’t getting enough sleep, it’s that they have too many other things going on in their life that are more important to them than sleep.  The reason this resolution will get ditched almost immediately is it’s attacking the problem from the wrong angle.  It’s like saying “I need to spend more time not smoking” instead of “I need to quit smoking”.  It’s a semantic play that allows people to resolve to do something they think is important, without recognizing that they’ll likely have to give up something else that is important to them in order to achieve this goal.   

Spend Less Time Doing (Wasteful Activity)

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We all have our fair-share of time wasters.  For some people, it’s watching a 4 hour long Mythbusters or General Hospital marathon.  For others it’s playing video games, or looking at cat pictures on the internet.  These activities don’t even have to interfere with work, school or other obligations (though they often do).  Most of us still feel a twinge of guilt when we sit on our asses not accomplishing anything for several hours—we could have been painting, or learning a new skill, or reconnecting with old friends or…crocheting…or…ok I don’t honestly know what do people do outside of browsing the internet for funny pictures. 

The point is, we all waste time, and we could be building a spaceship in our back yards (this is what I imagine I would have the time to do without video games). 

Why You Will Ditch It: 
You enjoy it too much, and there aren’t many negative consequences.  Come on this is America, not some utopia of productivity and conscientiousness.  If I want to sit on my couch for 6 hours and watch all three Star Wars movies back to back, not only will nobody dare criticize me, most people will join in and afterward we will say things like “That was awesome let’s do the Lord of the Rings next weekend!”.   
You may feel like you’re wasting your life and not being productive enough, but the truth is Americans are the most overworked citizens in the developed world.  Odds are you have already paid your dues during the work week, and even likely fielded several annoying calls on Saturday from your boss.  You’ve likely paid your dues, and a part of you already knows it.  This will probably be the quickest resolution to get ditched, simply because it doesn’t have a really good motivation behind it, unlike quitting smoking or getting in shape.  Unless you’re an unemployed, lazy slob, you’re likely just being mean to yourself for no reason.   

And so when the guilty part of your resolves to spend less time playing video games, the rest of your body screams “AW HELL NAW”, and sits your ass right back in front of that TV to participate in what is likely the most relaxing, gratifying and enjoyable thing you can easily do on a weekend..

This holiday season, many of us did part, most or all of our shopping online — and we spent a bundle. Did you get free shipping on any of your deals? Did you back out of any deals because of shipping charges? It turns out, many of us are turned off by having to pay for shipping and we’ll spend more if we know the shipping is free. This graphic illustrates how free shipping is king in online sales.

by Column Five Media via

There is nothing more American than spending the money that could support a Congolese family for a year on a bunch of crap that we don’t need.  Like those candy hearts for Valentines Day, you know the ones that taste like a mix of bone meal and shattered dreams?  Nothing says America like spending money on something no one wants, needs or (dear God) consumes all in the name of a holiday almost completely manufactured by corporations.  But it makes us feel good, and especially in these trying economic times, its nice to remind ourselves that the electric bill can go to hell, we’re going to buy some pine-tree branches and expensive electronics!  This is America, dammit!  And when we spend on Holidays, holy hell do we spend big. 
 

Halloween

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Coming in at number five in the list of most spendiferous holidays, Halloween clocks in spending close to $5 billion.  That’s roughly $50-$60 dollars spent for every person that actually celebrates the holiday (people of other cultures and that particularly fun-killing brand of Christians excluded.  While that number is rather large, keep in mind that it does not include the copious amounts of booze, which would likely catapult this holiday to the top of the list.   

So that’s $5 billion on sexy nurse costumes, sexy pirate costumes, and sexy proctologist costumes. Not to mention the candy.  To put it into perspective, that $5 billion number is actually higher than all corporate donations to foreign aid organizations for the entire year.  Halloween should get a pass for being a towering monstrosity of consumerism, owing to its unique status as one of the few holidays everyone enjoys. 

Easter

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Easter was yet another childhood excuse to eat so much candy it made us sick.  The Easter egg hunt is a particularly venerable piece of America, meriting its own section on the White House website.  So when you’re talking about what basically amounts to Halloween minus the costumes, it shouldn’t be any larger than $5 billion, right?  Well, no, try more like $14 billion.  While the majority of this is spent on food and those really disappointing egg-dyeing kits, a huge portion of this spending is on clothing.  And not just clothes for Easter…Mass?  Apparently, a chunk of that big ole $14 billion number comes from the fact that, come Easter, people women take the opportunity to refresh their wardrobes for the spring.  While it’s unclear if this is directly related to Easter or just a general trend, being Americans, I’m going with the “An excuse to shop and spend money!? HOLY CHRIST!” 

Mother’s and Father’s Day

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To prevent a Mothers vs. Fathers debate, let’s just group together the two holidays that have the highest ratio of how often you remember them to how much regret you feel.  Despite their somewhat sullied reputations as holidays invented to sell more Hallmark cards that contain some version of “I’m sorry you’re so disappointed in me”, celebration of mothers and fathers is actually an old tradition dating back to Greek and Roman times.

The modern incarnation started sometime around the turn of the century, with Mother’s day being declared a holiday by congress in 1914, and fathers day in 1966.  Combined, Americans spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $27 billion, with people loving their mothers about $5 billion more than they do their fathers.  This comes out to roughly $240 a person every year, a number that has jumped in recent years due to the slight economic recovery and the speculative rise in the costs of finger paints, construction paper and pipe cleaners. 

Valentine’s Day

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Short of Christmas, Valentine’s day is the biggest spending holiday of year for Americans.  For 2011, the number was expected to come out slightly ahead of Mother’s day, topping $15 billion.  And that’s not even counting the money spent on expensive dates, or the bottles of bourbon you use to drown your crushing, crushing loneliness.  And while a box of chocolates and some flowers might set you back $50, the average per-person expenditure actually comes out to the mid-hundreds.  Where’s that extra money coming from? Ask those of us who can barely afford a disgustingly cute Build-A-Bear (look it’s wearing a sailor’s uniform! It’s not supposed to be doing that, it’s a bear!).
 
Well the numbers for Valentine’s Day are skewed majorly upward by people buying jewelry so expensive if any sensible person received it they’d murder their significant other (guys can get jewelry too, right? How else am I going to finish my pejazzle set?) 

Black Friday

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Contrary to popular belief, Black Friday wasn’t the largest shopping day in America until 2005.  But thanks to relentless media boredom and ruthless retailer price-cutting, it has become the largest, even spawning a bunch of really annoying titles for concurrent days, including “Sofa Sunday” and “Cyber Monday” (despite the fact that no one under 35 has used the word “cyber” since 1994).  This year, Black Friday broke all records, with 226 million shoppers crowding the halls and trampling one another in pursuit of Tickle Me Elmo…or…whatever kids are interested in these days. 

That 226 million is more than three-quarters of every man, woman and child in America.  Meaning that basically anyone who is physically capable of walking and knocking over fellow moms like a linebacker went shopping a few weeks ago.  They spent almost $400 each and collectively spent upward of $50 billion.  That means one day easily dwarfs the expenditures of virtually every other major holiday throughout the year.  And that’s just for Black Friday alone.  The total Christmas season sees that number roughly double.  So next time you hear depressing economic news, remind yourself that—in a sort of modern-day Gift of the Magi — Americans are still finding ways to acquire even more credit card debt in order to buy expensive crap they don’t really need for their loved ones.

It’s pretty clear that depending on your level of skill, crime really can pay. A lot. Drug trafficking, murder-for-hire, car jacking, check fraud, and identity theft are all booming industries right now. Many criminals have failed to complete a formal education, another thing that’s been debunked as necessary for success. Intelligent deviants who choose a life of crime often profit — and sometimes, they go legit and become incredibly successful in business. Here are five criminals who became entrepreneurs.
 

Judge Mathis

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Although not nearly as entertaining as Judge Judy, Judge Mathis is a popular and well paid daytime television judge. Instead of enforcing the law, Mathis routinely broke it as a teenager. In his high school years, he joined an infamous Detroit street gang called the Erroll Flynns. At age 17, Mathis was arrested and sentenced to prison time after the judge saw his heap of past arrests. Mathis had had enough of crime.

Upon his release, Mathis attended college and became a campus activist. After graduating, he went on to become a court judge for Michigan’s 36th district and never looked back. His show has now been running for ten seasons (since 1999), taping over 2000 episodes. Mathis’ laid back, jovial attitude has gained fans who love his sense of humor. Not only does he allow long, angry diatribes by the disputing parties, but he often lets aspiring rappers and singers showcase their talents for a few seconds during the show. What a guy.

Tim Allen

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Yes, really. Before becoming famous for the quirky show Home Improvement, Tim Allen Dick (his real name) was an avid lover of cocaine. That’s not to say he gave up the stuff once on the show — just that he stopped getting caught. In 1978, Allen was caught trying to board a plane with over a pound of cocaine. Instead of taking the mandatory life sentence, Allen Dick ratted out 21 accomplices and got off with only five years prison time.

As most people would, Allen dropped the ‘Dick’ from the end of his name and began doing standup on a dare. When the crowd loved his ‘lovable loser with tools’ persona, he developed it into what would eventually become Home Improvement.

Although he became very successful, Allen didn’t leave his Dickish ways behind him. In 1997, Allen drunkenly crashed his car into a 72-year-old man… and then sued the guy for “damaging his well-known and well-respected name.” Allen dropped the lawsuit after learning the man had brain cancer. He actually went on to call this a humanitarian gesture.

Ironically, Allen’s dad was killed by a drunk driver. This didn’t stop Allen from getting arrested again on a DUI in 1999 for literally falling over during a sobriety test. So maybe he turned around — and then turned back around.

Jay Z

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Jay Z started out as a drug dealer in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects who shot his own brother over stealing his jewelry. Today, he’s one of the richest guys on earth and really knows how to run a business. Jay Z has released multiple rap albums, many of which are considered ‘landmarks’ of the rap music genre. He’s had four number one songs on the Billboard Hot 100. Jay Z owns clubs in multiple cities, will be partial owner of the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets, has a stake in Roca Wear, is a partial owner of the NJ Nets, and owns an investment company which has equity in a number of odd but profitable ventures. Combined with wife Beyonce, the couple has a value of around $150 million dollars.

Danny Trejo

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Danny Trejo could win a Grammy with zero acting skills whatsoever. All he has to do is stand around and stare at stuff to look pensive, terrifying, badass, and/or angry. He used his intimidating appearance to rob convenience stores and was in trouble so much that his own mother “stopped being surprised” when the cops would show up at their house. After his drug habits and life of crime landed him in prison for 15 years, Trejo decided to do something better with himself.

Trejo learned how to box and took a 12-step program to get clean and stay that way. One of his friends in the program happened to be a film production assistant, and asked Trejo if he could ‘look like a convict’ for a role in Runaway Train. Of course he could. Trejo has been in 124 movies since then, always playing the same character but never becoming uninteresting or trite.

Georgia Durante

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You may not have heard of Georgia Durante, but her story is the most badass one in this list. A model by 12 and nationally known as the model for Kodak by age 17, Durante was legit from the beginning. She turned to a life of crime after marrying mob man Joe Lamendola, who convinced her to become the getaway driver for many of the mob’s crimes. Durante learned tricks, stunts, and all-around crazy driving moves to elude the police.

It came to an end when Durante decided she had finally had enough of her husband’s abusive ways. During her divorce, she testified against many of the criminals she used to work for and with. Consequently, Durante started her own performance driving school and wrote a book about her life experiences. Her company has been used for the stunts in over 100 films, and Durante has personally been the body double for Cindy Crawford and Priscilla Presley.

Sometimes being in a relationship can feel like a job in itself: you spend time working on it. Things go wrong anyway. More time is spent trying to fix those things. Investments are made. Solutions are found, success is had, or the company closes forever. While treating your relationship like your job may come back to bite you in the end (no one wants a cold, calculating partner unless they’re trying to get featured on Wicked Attraction), there’s no denying the similarities. Here are five ways in which intimate, romantic relationships are just like running a business.

Maintenance

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Job maintenance:

- Timeliness. Arriving and completing your work on time are pretty important in the workplace. Fail to live up to either of these standards a few times and be amazed at how quickly your position is handed over to someone else.
- Communication. You may have to communicate with your boss about workplace concerns, to request a raise, or discuss project details. Communicating with other coworkers can be important, too; good teamwork, increased productivity, positive results, and getting to hear all the latest gossip are the effects of good communication skills in action.
- Work. You’ve got to put in the work or it just won’t work. Or you won’t be working, rather.

Relationship maintenance:

- Timeliness. Keep missing dates and you’ll be fired as well. Said you would complete some menial task for your S.O. and forgot? Better come up with a good excuse — your partner hates feeling forgotten just as much as your boss.
- Communication. You may have to communicate with your S.O. about relationship concerns (Please stop picking your nose and wiping it on me/Why do you have 12 texts from a guy named Adam?), request a raise (more blow jobs, please), or discuss project details (I really think an abortion is the best course of action at this point in our lives).
- Work. Remembering events like holidays and birthdays, and trying to go out of your way to make the other person feel loved on a daily basis are just some of the ways in which you have to work to keep your relationship successful.

Growing the Business

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Growing your relationship like a business doesn’t necessarily imply kids. It can mean expanding in other ways, such as exploring new things together. Like a business, taking your relationship in a new or different direction can be extremely beneficial to both parties. To address the dirty minds, the exploration can be sexual — but doesn’t have to be. Trying new things can be anything from going on a camping trip together to trying a new food one of you is weary about.

When a business changes directions, they discover what works and what doesn’t. The business can learn from that change — what should they have done differently or better? What’s the solution now? This is just like a relationship in the way that exploring new things together can uncover facets about your S.O. you previously never knew existed. Your S.O. may hate or love the experience, and their reaction to it can change your view of them for better or worse. For example, a company that sells headache medication may try to do a campaign focusing on the camping demographic. If that company fails to become familiar enough with the demographic and puts out an ad which alienates that community instead of connecting with them, it can be a huge loss. The same goes for relationship exploration — if the two of you embark on a trip and the two people fail to connect (one person is enjoying the trip while the other absolutely hates it, one person needs help on a task and the other fails to support), it can wind up creating a large rift instead.

Success

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The feeling of success is great, whether it’s in a relationship or business. Just like a business, relationship success doesn’t mean that it’s time to stop putting in work and maintenance. In a successful relationship, each employee is happy and working toward a foreseeable goal. This can be a baby, opening a business together, buying a home, getting a dog, or planning a trip.

Successful relationships pay out on time (sex, keeping your dates, sex, remembering birthdays, sex, doing sweet things, having a lot of sex), make the employee feel secure, and give hope for a successful future. And like relationships, businesses experiencing success tend to be happier environments.

Hard Times

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When a business falls under hard times, they may hire consultants or new employees to see them through it. Those in a strained relationship may seek counseling. In both of these situations, the advice of a professional only goes so far — the rest of the task is up to the receiver. If the business or relationship uses this advice wisely (assuming it’s good advice), it’s likely that a comeback can be made. There’s still a lot of maintenance going on, especially in trying times.

A business or relationship may begin to falter due to neglect, slacking, a change in employee attitudes, poor investments, or failed exploits. If a couple is finding out that they butt heads more and more on every ‘fun’ new experience they decide to explore together, the problem may be that their goals or personalities simply don’t align. In business, this isn’t much different; employees who become increasingly less invested in a company will most likely start working less diligently. Furthermore, business owners may begin to dispute the direction of the company and find differing goals between the two of them.

Knowing When to Quit

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Knowing when to quit is often the hardest part of a business and relationship.

In either one, you get used to being there. You’re comfortable. What are you going to do once you leave? What else is out there for you? Will you be able to make it on your own? What will you do in the meantime, without income/your partner?

Sticking around is a good way to show that you’re committed and trying to make a change, but there are times when walking away is truly the best option. If the relationship or business continues to fail time and time again, it’s probably a bad sign. Don’t invest your life savings or your entire life in something that just doesn’t seem to be working. After years of perseverance, how can you know the right time to call it quits?

In a relationship, problems are usually reoccurring. New ones typically don’t surface unless from an event (i.e. cheating); if someone is angry and suspicious with you for little reason, it may take a very long time for them to get over that — if at all. Businesses are similar, but this comparison works better if we’re imagining the employee. A business who promises raises and never comes through, is constantly in financial turmoil which seems to get worse every year, and often speaks about the greatness to come (which never seems to come), it might be better to walk away. Instead of investing your time and emotions into something which seems resistant to change, unable to pay you enough, and/or going nowhere fast, it may be better to spend some time alone and refocus yourself.

With relationships, consultation is not always the answer. If both parties are unable to work out their differences, try not to invest yourself too much and realize that there are always other options — even if they aren’t the ones you once idealized.

One of the most prominent features of the past decade — the meteoric rise of social networking websites — has changed the way we communicate and interact, both online and in that other place that’s like the Internet but with sunlight and consequences.  Facebook stands alone as by far the largest and most expansive social network, registering nearly 800 million active users.  That’s roughly two and a half times as many people on the entire Internet in 2000.  So yeah, they’re kind of a big deal.  But like any one person, company or government becoming too powerful, they’ve inevitably turned a little bit sinister in some pretty evil ways. 
 

Facebook Makes You a Worse Person

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To start this out, it’s important to say that the realm of studying social networks and their effects on people is notoriously difficult.  How do you measure the value of time spent on Facebook relative to other time?  In one person’s view it might be frivolous “OMG YOU LOOK SO CUTE” commenting on  duck-faced pictures.  In another person’s view, it’s valuable networking that will pay dividends in employment, education and general happiness later in that person’s life.  It’s also unfair to single out Facebook and online social networking in particular since it’s not entirely clear that, if Facebook did not exist, a person wouldn’t instead spend their time socializing elsewhere instead of doing their homework.  That said, anything that we do more frequently on the internet than look at porn requires us to admit that it’s probably having some sort of effect. 

So with all those caveats out of the way, an early study of Facebook’s effect on teenagers has found that it turns them into narcissistic, impatient, entitled little cretins.  While this kind of sounds like the critique every old man or woman has had about the younger generation since the beginning of time, in this case it kind of makes sense.  Imagine a world where heaping praise on your friends was free, cheap, and a hell of a lot easier than physically tracking them down and saying awkward compliments to their face.  Ten years ago if a kid went through the halls of his or her middle school telling everyone what they had for breakfast, they’d receive a heap of much-deserved indifference and scorn.  On Facebook, they’ll probably get a small number of “likes” and perhaps even “I luv capn crunch omg so random!!!” simply because it’s so easy and there are no consequences.   

Now imagine starting every day thinking that people actually care about what you ate that morning, and tell me that doesn’t sound exactly like the entitled self-centeredness that crafts many a classy, celebrity. 

Lower Grades

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There’s a small amount of emerging evidence that high users of Facebook score lower than their non-Facebook-using counterparts.  As mentioned earlier, there’s a definite chicken-and-the-egg problem to drawing too much from these studies.  Most importantly, it’s difficult to tell if the people using Facebook heavily wouldn’t just waste their time getting high and awkwardly hitting on Freshmen if Facebook didn’t exist. 

But in an environment where educators are already desperately trying to shut out social pressures to get the little terrors to focus on a few equations for just a few precious seconds, a world where their minds are constantly a buzz with the latest gossip delivered instantly to their smartphone can’t possibly be helping.  Sure there is some evidence that the drop in grades is not really attributable to Facebook and it might actually increase social acuity, in a world where America greatly in the hard sciences a few more engineers over therapists might be helpful.   

Privacy

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Probably the most publicized instance of Facebook being evil is their numerous, numerous scandals involving user privacy.  As end-users, we trust Facebook with a lot of personal information, and to a certain extent the age-old maxim of “don’t put anything on the Internet you wouldn’t want the world to see (because they will)” holds true.  That said, Facebook has repeatedly violated agreements with users, changed agreements without warning, and hidden privacy controls deep within the annals of a user’s profile.  They have a very strong incentive to get as much of your personal information on the site as possible because, despite their insistence to the contrary, they sell it to third parties. 

This all wouldn’t be so bad if Facebook was the least bit up front about how much information was actually private.  Or if they kept promises to users to do a better job of protecting personal information.  Or if privacy breaches didn’t continue to happen, one after the other, again and again.  It’s no wonder that Facebook is one of the most reviled interfaces on the web, ranking below even the IRS. 

Envy and Stress

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You know how everyone has one of those friends that are so full of shit, but you wouldn’t know it unless you spent a little bit of time with them?  These people end up utterly impressing anyone they meet for under a few hours, and completely alienating almost anyone else.  Now imagine these people were able to carefully tailor their image, controlling not only what people said about them, but—through the selection of photographs—how they actually looked.  And imagine that the image that everyone tries to portray to the world was just a little bit more easy to get away with, and you have one of the most insidiously evil things about Facebook.  Since no one is going to post pictures of them vomiting and crying in the bathroom about how no one will ever love them and they’re still in love with their ex, everyone seems much more happy, actualized and lotsa-sex-having than you.   

In a word, Facebook breeds envy untempered by all those times we caught our friends writing whiny poetry and masturbating to unspeakable things.  The worst part is it feeds off itself in a Pleasantville-esque manner that seems a little out of place in the second decade of the 21st century.  Everyone thinks everyone else is perfect, and is therefore less willing to admit their faults, etc… etc…   

But just when you thought the mental trauma a calmly blue-tinged website would inflict was over, there’s also the fact that it’s been shown to increase stress in users.  How this works is a little silly, but intuitive.  Essentially think of all your social obligations before Facebook, and how much trouble you had remembering everyone’s birthday, anniversary, party, relationship status etc…  It seems like Facebook would make managing these things easier, and perhaps that’s true for Luddites with a few dozen friends.  For the rest of us, ante-Facebook we had maybe a dozen close friends and acquaintances to think about.  Now we have 500.  And we’re expected to remember everything because, hell, who’s too lazy to post on someone’s wall on their birthday.  It’s both the scale and the perceived ease of performing these actions that stresses users out. 

There’s also the common “Oh Shit My Mom’s On Here” reaction that has lead to more deleted comments than auto-corrects of the word “cope”.  You’re not just managing 500 friendships and relationships, you’re managing 500 relationships and friendships as they relate to one another. Every comment to a friend requires forethought of how 500 other people will respond and view you.  You may never be forced into an awkward in-person conversation on Facebook where you have to think of responses on the spot, but your social network just exploded by several orders of magnitude, try not to let it stress you out. 

Impossible to Escape

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In the ultimate twist to this horror story that has dominated our social lives for the past 4 years, we, the plucky heroes, go to exit the haunted house only to find it is locked from the outside. Like some sort of internet Hotel California, it takes less than 15 minutes to check into Facebook, but you can never leave.  The herpes of the Internet, Facebook even tracks users activity after they’ve logged out of Facebook and closed the window.  That’s admittedly more like the evil computer coming back online after being unplugged, but the point is Facebook doesn’t just violate your privacy and turn you into a narcissist, it does so apparently by watching Frankenstein, The Shining and The Ring and thinking “You know what, this would be a great way to treat our users.” 


Oh baby, baby… it is a very wild world.  More wild, in fact, than it was when Cat Stevens first sang about it in 1970.  One way in which this wildness is manifested is the increased use of drugs and prevalence of substance addiction, an issue brought to light by shows like “Intervention” and people like Nicole Richie.  It’s enough to make one long for simpler times when men wore hats, ladies blushed, and people didn’t need such elaborate chemical compounds to have fun on a Friday night.

But if we look a little closer, the days of yore might not be quite so innocent as they seem.  Maybe raves weren’t as popular back then as they are today, but people were popping, drinking, smoking and snorting many of the same delightful substances that fill Lindsay Lohan’s purse today!  Stranger still… these substances used to be legal, making our so-called modern age look like a prudish and puritanical version of the past.  How did our Great Great Grandmothers and Grandfathers get away with it?  Often the answer was as simple as marketing: call the drugs medicine.

Meth

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Meth, according to almost anyone you ask, is a dangerous drug.  In addition to increasing energy and giving you an emotional jolt before you head to an all night orgy set to songs by Robyn, it is devastatingly addictive and is known to lead to bad choices in haircut, tooth loss, and psychosis.  Messing with Meth is simply not the same as smoking a doobie behind the Junior High — and almost 100% of addicts say they were tragically hooked the very first time they tried it.

All the same, there was a time when this toxin was not only legal but was available at your local Duane Reade… or whatever pharmacy people were going to in the nineteenth century.  Norodin (a brand name for Meth) was prescribed for people with light depression… presumably to turn it into heavy depression once a full blown chemical addiction kicked in.  Still, it was said that Norodin was just the thing for dispelling “the shadows of mild mental depression.” One in five doctors recommend Meth?  Now there’s a reason to get happy!

Marijuana

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Our country stands at a crossroads regarding Marijuana.  Considering that its psychoactive effects are less significant than a bottle of over-the-counter Robitussin it is amazing to see how this handsome little plant has played such a great roll in politics, policy, philosophy, and religion in the U.S. and beyond.  In California you can get some premium sticky bud if you have a tummy ache and a doctor’s note.  In most other states, however, you have to go through the hassle of texting a code word to some jerk on a bicycle introduced to you by your nephew… all to get a buzz on.

But once upon a time (up until the early 1900’s) use of Marijuana in the United States was completely unrestricted.  It was grown for use in textiles and paper by farmers across the land and no doubt puffed on by 19th century farm boys who could only dream of a day when such an experience would be enhanced by the advent of Pink Floyd and Liberal Arts educations.

Heroin

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Do you remember what your mother did for you when you were sick with sniffles as a child?  Most likely her solution to this problem involved some combination of chicken noodle soup, a VHS of your favorite Disney movie, and Heroin … right?

Probably not, but once upon a time Heroin, which was developed in 1874 as a substitute for Morphine, was used as a cough suppressant.  Watching any “Intervention” episode focused on Heroin addiction will make you wonder why anyone would ever choose that over a cough, no matter how hacking and wet.

Still, it took over 30 years for people to realize that the cough was worth it and by the time they did it was apparently too late… the drug remains a ghoulish figure on the scene of American addiction to this very day and the common cold has yet to be cured.

MDMA

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We don’t have to suffer through a trip to Grandma’s house to hear about the glory days of legal Ecstasy use.  Chances are that mom and dad enjoyed its free reign seeing as it was legal just a few short decades ago.  Developed in 1912, MDMA achieved popularity in the seventies when a Berkeley professor noted its remarkable abilities in combating a wide array of psychiatric conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression.

But when it was discovered that the substance was also good for a great night out dancing to horrible club-beats and caressing friends’ faces, an emergency ban was thrown on it.  Modern-day ravers and druggies still enjoy this recreational substance all over the world, but unfortunately, because of the ban, the people who could actually derive real benefit from it are still deprived.

Roofies

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GHB, also known as the date-rape drug and “Roofies” are one of the most feared drugs today.  Any club-goer with savvy knows to keep an eye on his or her drink from the first pour to the last sip as its not uncommon for club creepers and date rapists to slip this small but dangerous drug into a drink and take advantage of the weakened victim. The drug is odorless and tasteless, making it even easier for predators to slip it into a drink as the victim turns around for even just a second.

Shockingly, this drug was not made a federally controlled substance until the late, great year of 2000 even though it was developed all the way back in the wild 1960s.  Its depressive and palliative effects were used medically for anesthetic purposes and the drug was often given to women in childbirth to alleviate some of their pain.

Interestingly enough, however, the drug has very recently come back into medical use as a treatment for narcolepsy.  Strange, as it seems to have a knocking-out effect.

LSD

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LSD or acid is a powerful hallucinogenic known for causing users to “trip balls”, see God or Buddha, and occasionally jump off buildings with the conviction that they can fly.  In vogue mostly among the country’s dreadlocked war protestors, LSD was developed by accident in 1943.  Its unique effects were seized upon by the U.S. government itself, which tested the drug as a means of mind control and truth extraction.

As anyone who has ever been around a person on LSD surely knows, not much truth is coming out of their lips unless it’s regarding the hidden nature of the cosmos or how strange hands are when you really look at them.  In 1970, after a decade of abuse by the Haight-Ashbury crowd, the government finally put the kibosh on the substance.

Cocaine

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Cocaine is a huge part of American culture.  Illicit and illegal, yes, but where would the nation’s models, singers, heiresses and college students be without it?  A quick snort of “nose candy” and you are guaranteed heightened energy and nearly fifteen minutes of tenuous and fleeting self-confidence.

But believe it or not… Kate Moss and Charlie Sheen are not the most notable people to have taken a ride on the cocaine train.  Tons of famous figures from history loved the stuff, including one Sigmund Freud who used it as a therapeutic tool.

Also, ever wonder why your favorite soft drink has the same name as your favorite drug?  Well, Coca-Cola used to list Cocaine as an ingredient.  Modern Cocaine came about in the 1860s and enjoyed legality until 1914 when everyone stopped doing it and it was never seen again… of course.

Opium

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In the mid-nineteenth century Opium use was brought to the West by the influx of Chinese laborers.  There the drug had been used for centuries and it really made a splash in Europe and the United States as Opium dens sprung up like so many Starbucks locations.

Derived from the Poppy seed, smoking Opium produces euphoria, relaxation, and a delightful fogginess of mind.  It was also given to women to fight menstrual cramps and, goodness gracious, given to crying babies to… you know… shut them up.  It really was a great Mother’s Little Helper.

Peyote

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Mescaline, also known as Peyote, is an American grown hallucinogen famous for its historic use in Native American religious ceremonies.  Despite being made illegal in some states during the 20s and 30s, Peyote was legally enjoyed by most states throughout the 60s… when it really counted.  Hippies tired of their boring white bread, Christian upbringings turned to the writings of Don Juan and other Native American spiritual guides before taking Peyote to engender their own Spirit Quests.  These people now hold down respectable jobs where they play Minesweeper at their cubicle desks, but no doubt they still think fondly of their desert wandering and spiritual Peyote visions.

In 1970 the drug was outlawed but many Native American places of worship are allowed exemption from this ban.  This was a nice gesture of the U.S. government, all things considered.  But today’s college students get no such break.

Mushrooms

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Despite having been used for thousands of years, people were debating the existence of Hallucinogenic mushrooms up until the early 1900s.  Commonly thought of as a natural LSD,Mushrooms produce profound visual and audio hallucinations wherein the true nature of the human experience is dubiously bestowed on the drug-taker for the duration of about eight hours.

In the 60’s the drug was made famous by writer and philosopher Timothy Leary who espoused its use as a tool for spiritual and psychological development and mushrooms quickly became a huge part of American hippie subculture.  But towards the end of the 60s, as America’s other favorite pastimes became illegal one by one, mushrooms bit the dust as well with a federal ban.

The Internet (and the American public) are never short of scandals. We peddle them like fruits, always calling a new celebrity out on their addiction, affair, private text messages or offensive jokes. While we are busy paying attention to crap that really doesn’t matter, we’re distracted from larger (and more important) issues at hand. Here are 11 ‘scandals’ that dumb us down, and 15 actually significant problems to counter each one.

Lindsay’s Liquor Problem vs. All the Black Crackheads in Jail

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Lindsay Lohan’s life is so hard. Being told not to party, partying anyway, getting caught, being subjected to house ‘arrest’ in your awful(ly) spacious duplex (complete with a terrible balcony), and being subjected to constant paparazzi harassment after leaving Whole Foods is all very tragic. However, it’s not a very exciting news story. No one would care about some bratty little girl’s alcoholic trials and tribulations while growing up, right? Actually, it’s making a lot of stupid headlines. When will this boring charade finally end?

Lindsay Lohan’s choice of cocktail is definitely less important than:

The US Sentencing Commission’s decision to allow up to 12k federal crack offenders to become eligible for release or a reduced sentence under the Fair Sentencing Act. Although the prison industrial complex retains its retard-strength, the Fair Sentencing Act is at least a little progressive. In some areas, possession of only 5 grams held a minimum five year sentence…the same mandatory sentence for possession of 100x more (500 grams) powder cocaine. This law will save an estimated $200 million dollars over the next five years. It’s a start. It’s also worth noting that the userbase of crack is mostly black, while that of cocaine is mostly white. Racist laws much?

Casey Anthony’s OJ Verdict vs. Our Crappy Justice System

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Whether she did it or not, she was found not guilty. She may not have been rich like OJ, but she was pretty and white.

Maybe we should stop talking specifically about Casey Anthony, and more about:

The fact that the justice system is incredibly flawed. Restraining Orders are often useless against the people they’re meant to deter. Sentences faced by the prosecuted are often unfairly distributed, such as an 18 year old facing up to 8 years for placing a blowup doll in his high school as a prank as compared to the high school rapist who was not only freed but allowed to play varsity basketball, where his victim was asked to cheer for him. She was removed from the squad when she refused — then ordered to pay $45,000 of the school’s attorney’s fees for filing a “frivolous” lawsuit about the matter. Racist and prejudice judges are more common than we’d like to think. It seems like our laws and standards are the things that need revising. Maybe then there would have been enough evidence to convict Anthony of what common sense would tell you was a filicide.

Gottfried’s Insensitivity vs. No More Spicy Tuna Rolls

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Gilbert Gottfried was recently fired by AFLAC for making some pretty insensitive jokes about Japan’s tragic earthquake and tsunami mega combo. It seems that celebrities sometimes forget that everyone is watching them with hawk eyes, waiting for a slip-up that can be sold or used to publicly humiliate the mistaken. Gottfried’s jokes were definitely in poor taste and made him look like a total jerk. Sometimes people are only able to deal with serious issues by trying to lighten the problem with humor. Sometimes people say things casually when others are taking them seriously. Whatever the reason, a little humor never hurt anyone. Gottfried wasn’t responsible for any deaths in Japan, nor did he seem to be joking in a hateful or prejudice manner. If Japan had an extra donated dollar for every person who complained about Gottfried’s comments, how much more do you think they’d have?

Maybe we should ignore the (ignorant? mean? thoughtless?) people we don’t like and pay a little more attention to more important issues at hand, such as:

Tuna are on their way to dodo-dom. It might sound stupid, but Japan is facing Tuna extinction. A multi-billion dollar industry, Tuna fishing in the Mediterranean may come to an end within the next five years. Not only would this effect the economy of a number of countries, but the ecosystem as well.

Additionally, your tuna salad or spicy tuna roll may be farmed, and therefore fed a whole bunch of crap you probably wish never existed.

Tracy Morgan Deserves Death Penalty vs. Those Sick and Blasphemous Homosexuals

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Tracy Morgan is in trouble again, and not for joking to stab his imaginary homosexual son. Only a few weeks after the media frenzy inspired by his homophobic ranting, he made jokes during a stand-up routine about ‘retard strength’ and referred to a woman he dated as “a cripple.” Although these comments were far from PC, Morgan, like many other comedians, is known for making lewd and inappropriate jokes. He’s a comedian. He was in a comedy club. Although his comments were nonviolent (albeit rude, as is his nature) and non-hateful, the media went nuts. Also, a person with a crippled limb is technically a cripple. If Tracy Morgan is crucified for remarks against any special interest group, what about every other comedian?

Maybe we should be paying less attention to Morgan’s declining ability to write jokes and more attention to:

Pennsylvania state senator Rick Santorum thinks “the right to privacy doesn’t exist in the United States Constitution” and called bans on gay marriage “common sense.”

“I do believe the family, integrity of the family is important for the future of our country. But that does not mean that, that I don’t like people or I hate people or that there’s something wrong. The only thing that’s wrong is their opinion.”
- Rick Santorum

Oh, and he also blamed victims (see: children) who were sexually assaulted by priests for engaging in “a basic homosexual relationship.”

Weiner Overdoses on Penis Jokes vs. Rapist Politician, NH

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Anthony Weiner was recently caught sending dick pics and sexually suggestive messages to a stripper in Las Vegas. Big deal. It’s not like most Americans haven’t ever done a selfish thing. That’s not to condone cheating, but it is to say that the harsh judgment passed on him and the media circus surrounding his personal life are disgustingly hypocritical. Famous people are only here to serve and entertain the rest of us paupers, and damn their normal-people lives! They are expected to apologize for personal mistakes which don’t affect anyone who would be reading about them in a newspaper.

Maybe we should be paying less attention to Weiner’s Weiner and more attention to:

Rapist politician Jeffrey Gray. Gray is a man convicted of stalking and assault. He is also accused of a kidnapping, assault and rape (which he apparently accomplished with the help of Craigslist) and is an elected board member in New Hampshire. Gray has a storied criminal history, including three misdemeanors involving an ex-girlfriend who took a restraining order out against him — and later renewed it, reporting new instances of harassment and threats of suicide. Despite his repeated domestic violence offenses and accusations of rape, Gray was elected anyway. Way to go, New Hampshire.

Octomom vs. Crevice Groping, Coming to an Airline Near You

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Octomom is an idiot. That’s no secret. She’s also terribly amusing in the way only a burning bus full of your worst enemies could be. You feel bad, but you can’t really help, so why not enjoy it a little? Octomom has recently admitted to literally hating all of her children. She told The Daily Mail that she wishes her octopussy was nothing more than a regular, un-prefaced one. We all knew she couldn’t pay adequate attention to fourteen little “animals”, as she so affectionately called them while one child was being photographed eating paint chips.

Octomom’s vaginal lamenting is disgustingly funny (and kind of infuriating), but we have reason to be suicidal as well:

TSA is threatening to invade our crevices like so many unwanted babies because “the government” (whoever that is) has warned that terrorists plan to surgically implant explosives on their bodies in order to surpass airport security. “Experts” said that scanners might not be able to detect bombs placed under the skin, so new screening procedures may be developed to thwart those pesky suicide bombers. Prepare to clench your jaw.

Arnold, The Violator vs. Religious People Ruining the World

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Arnold Schwarzenneger recently came under public scrutiny when he was found to have fathered a bastard child with his housekeeper, a woman with whom he was having an affair for possibly longer than a decade. Mildred Baena sold her story to the tabloids, successfully screwing over Schwarzenegger in the process. His private life instantly became a hot topic in tabloids and on the news, where news reporters everywhere paused to consider not only the standards of their station, but the definition of the word ‘news’. There were exclusive photos, interviews, talk of lawsuits and a divorce. Schwarzenegger’s choice to cheat and refusal to admit paternity to his illegitimate child may have been hurtful to his immediate family, but it was a little less socially significant than dozens of events which do effect the public at large.

Maybe we should be less concerned with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lucky bastard and more concerned with:

Ohio named as one of the ‘worst states in terms of women’s access to abortion and contraceptive services’, and seem to enjoy the title as well. How else would one explain the state’s choice to ignore a bill designed to assist rape victims in preventing unwanted pregnancies and therefore avoiding an even more unwanted abortion? Not only was the bill ignored, receiving little media coverage, but it was also berated by Ohio Right to Life. Right to Life claims that the bill would force religious hospitals and ‘pro-life taxpayers’ to prescribe the drug. The stupidity is astounding. Either way, even the recent discovery that fish can use tools is more interesting than Arnold’s Anthony Weiner.

Charlie Sheen’s Boring Rants vs. Corporate Personhood Actually Being a Real Thing

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Charlie Sheen is kind of funny, but he’s not vastly different from any other drunk or drug addicted attention whore who’s given attention and decides to run with it. Tiger blood, winning, magically curing addiction using only brain power and a lot of other almost immediately played out jokes were spawned from Charlie Sheen’s somewhat humorous rantings. People began paying to see him ‘perform’ on stage. He was a billion new memes at once. People argued over whether he was a junkie lunatic, a really cool guy, or a little of both. Ultimately, who cares? The craziest thing he did was have the courage to be honest about his drug use without apologizing to a bunch of people who don’t deserve it (that’s us! the public!).

While Charlie Sheen is making videos on The YouTubes, we should really be watching:

The movement to abolish corporate personhood, which sounds a lot more boring but is more important than any viral Internet video you’ll ever watch. American laws protect corporations, and corporations own (and pwn) the crap out of the American people. As ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC, unlimited amounts of cash can be funneled into political campaigns from companies or richer-than-God individuals. It’s no secret that companies basically try to ‘buy’ laws that favor their businesses, and the government is protecting their right to do so by allowing corporations to maintain the same rights as a legal person.

Wes Cage vs. Our Police State

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Weston Cage likes airing out his dirty laundry on Facebook, and has made a bunch of derogatory remarks about his wife via status updates, which he also used to announce his divorce. He’s like the character his father plays in that terrible Wicker Man remake: a little crazy, unattractive, violent, and unable to hold anyone’s attention span for longer than ten minutes. Unless that ‘anyone’ is a crazed (Nu-Metal) death cult trying to burn him at the stake.

It’s unclear whether or not anyone actually cares about Cage’s Facebook drama. While Cage enjoys the attention, there are more important people who do not:

The police, who are now trying to make it illegal for you to watch them. An Illinois man was facing a possible 4 to 15 year sentence because he recorded his own arrest. Although a few states’ laws maintain that both parties must consent to videotaping for it to be legal, this law has been twisted and misconstrued by the police in more than just the said states. If they want to, the police can easily find a way to arrest you for looking at them the wrong way. Just look at Emily Good, who was arrested for filming police from her front yard even though she was clearly posing no threat. Charges were dismissed, but the police remain the only people who manage to harass and detain innocent people without consequence.

Roger Ebert’s Smart Mouth-Thing vs. Modern Slavery

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Ryan Dunn broke the hearts of CKY/Jackass fans across the nation when he crashed his Porche in a drunk driving accident and died. He had been bringing laughter and fun to some for over 10 years, and the attachment to the cheery and ridiculous Jackass crew was understandable… But not so much for Roger Ebert, who posted a snarky tweet about Dunn’s death before it was confirmed that he was, indeed, very drunk at the time of the accident.

“Friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive”, he wrote. This one person’s stupid opinion caused a lot of backlash, getting lambasted as insensitive and mean. Some people even went as far as to make fun of Ebert’s medical condition, which really isn’t any better than making a general comment about the dangers and consequences of drunk driving. Ebert was basically saying “driving drunk is stupid and has dire consequences, as you can see.” He had a bit of an attitude when he said it. He made it into a bit of a semantics joke. Whatever. Celebrating Ryan Dunn’s life through screenings of his videos/movies would have been a lot more productive than whining about someone else’s opinion.

Either way, maybe we should care less about Ebert’s aggressive stance against drunk driving and more about:

Modern day slavery. The government is using prisoners as slave labor. In U.S. Federal prisons, inmates are being paid pennies an hour to do work for military corporations. They often work in dangerous and toxic environments without safety equipment and receive no benefits or vacation days. Oh, and if it weren’t pretty much like old-fashioned slavery already, guess what else reeks of history repeating itself? According to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Department report there were 846,000 black men in prison in 2008. That means that there are likely more African American men doing slave labor in prisons right now than there were actual African American men who were slaves.

Tobey Maguire Plays Poker or Something vs. Arizona Town Council Members Stealing Millions of Dollars

Tobey Maguire has a lot of money. He gambled a bunch of it away in high-stakes poker games, but also won a lot of it back. Maguire also fought with convicted Ponzi scheme felon Brad Ruderman about who owed who thousands of thousands of dollars. No one wrote a bunch of articles about that time you drunkenly lost ten dollars at poker in your basement, forgot about it, and then fought with your friend for ‘stealing’, so why is this any more sensational? The money is higher, but none of it belongs to anyone except Tobey (and possibly Ruderman, but probably not since he lost the legal battle and was filing for bankruptcy anyway). A bunch of scans of Tobey’s checks later and the scandal is all but settled.

Maybe we should care less about Tobey’s leisure activities and more about the crazy money laundering coverups happening in Arizona right now:

Quartzsite, Arizona, has up to $250,000 in checks disappear mysteriously per year… only to reappear in the pockets of allegedly corrupt council members. After a council meeting in which a woman was arrested for speaking out against corrupt council and police activities during her allotted floor time. The woman, Jennifer Jones, is arrested despite protests from the mayor, who is also being persecuted for trying to uncover the truth about the missing money and illegal scandals that may be happening behind closed doors.

After the event, the town inappropriately declared a state of emergency during which Foster was basically stripped of his title as mayor, and council meetings were held without public comment/notice/viewing. Although a recording of the impromptu meetings were set to be released on Monday, no such documentation has surfaced.

Kids are like very annoying robots: they’re cool when they are new, but quickly require more and more upgrades to stay current. Plus they poop and robots don’t even do that. Okay, maybe kids aren’t like robots, but they do learn things. Since we were all kids, we learned those things too. Here are 10 valuable lessons you learned early that still help you out to this day.

Always Pee Before You Leave

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It only takes one time of peeing your pants on a family trip to learn this lesson. The urine odor of your dad’s back seat upholstery was a constant reminder until your dad got a new car. Sure it was traumatic and is the first story you repeat to your therapist and it’s probably why you live in constant fear of public urination, but gosh darn it, you know you always make sure your bladder is empty before you start the engine of your car now.

Breakfast is the Most Important Meal of the Day

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Saturday mornings meant bowls of sugary goodness and cartoons back in the day. These days, you know it means you better eat something with your cup of coffee or your stomach will be in knots halfway through your first client meeting. Plus, there’s no better way to kill the first hour or three at the office swinging by the break room and stuffing your face with carbs. Sure beats work.

Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees

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You figured this out after none of the nickel trees you planted sprouted. Duh! Of course, you didn’t really learn the important part of this lesson until your dad cut up your credit card sophomore year in college after you charged that hot tub.

All Bullies Are Cowards at Heart

You probably discovered this one by accident. After getting cornered by the playground bully, you figured you were gonna die anyway. Might as well go out swinging. Miracles of miracles, one of your punches landed, hard. The next thing you know, that bully was crying and through all the blubbering at the principal’s office you realize he was just some fat kid with a self-esteem problem. Now if only you could apply this schoolyard cure to that overweight supervisor that makes everyone work in the office on Saturday…

Cheaters Never Win

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Once you figured out the bullies, it was easy to see that the cheaters were cheating for the same reason. Unable to beat anyone up in the playground, they instead cheated on tests, cheated on video games and just generally lied to get what they wanted. Sure, that liar got most of your Pokemon cards, but it made you wary of people later in life. Thanks to them, you didn’t let that used car salesman sell you meteor insurance.

Honesty is the Best Policy

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After watching a cheater get beat up by a bully, you figured being honest was the best way to go. It also saved you a lot of drama, especially when it came to relationships. It only took one to blow up in your face before you realized that you’d never be able to remember all your lies, even with the help of an iPad and an Excel Spreadsheet.

There Are no Stupid Questions

This was a lesson you learned after attempting to operate your mother’s blender or your dad’s power tools without reading the instructions. While you bled in the passenger seat on the way to the Emergency Room, all the great questions you could’ve asked popped into your head as you slowly lost consciousness.

Never Show Weakness in Front of Other Kids

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In the dog eat dog world of high school, only the strong survive. The quickest way to score some street cred was to immediately pick on a kid weaker than you. Although you know you could go “too weak” like to pick on the asthmatic, one-legged foreign exchange student. Just like prison, you need to verbally shank another student before he pointed out how bad your acne was.

Your Parents’ Rules End at the Edge of Their Property

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While under your parents’ roof, you lived by their rules. You knew that because they never stopped yammering about it. Fortunately, they were too tired to go anywhere but under their roof which meant the rest of the world was as lawless to you as the 10 mile limit in the ocean. As long as your parents didn’t see it, hear it or smell it on your breath later, you were as good as gold.

When You Lie to Your Parents, Have Plausible Deniability

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The final lesson every kid learns is to lie to their parents. What else are you going to do later in life? It’s the only way you’ll be able to dump them into a nursing home and take their house before they realize what’s going on, later. But if you get caught, you have to have an excuse that’s already half true. Wreck the family car? It was stolen (technically by you). Get someone pregnant? You had protection (in your glove compartment). Fail out of medical school, you’re still a doctor! (if you call chiropracticing “medicine”).