Cough sputter snurfle, and a BURNIN' FEVER

People who share are awesome, don't you think? Generosity is a virtue, a happy giver is well loved by God (paraphrasing there), 'tis better to give than to receive. Some people are like that, just giving and giving until there's nothing left to share but the germs that are infesting their systems, so they give that too, even if the recipient isn't really all that keen on what's up for offer.

Which is why I'm here blowing my nose, trying to blink away the gunk in my eyes, and coughing like a steam engine. I accepting Thing 1's offering of a few good germs (or virii, more than likely), and am now anticipating a 24-hour run of the snots.

Yey.

On the plus side, there's a nice long nap in my future, which almost never sucks.

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Basmati rice is so much better than regular rice it's ridiculous. Completely worth the money.

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Despite my earlier riff on giving (which was, you'll note, heavy on the sarcasm), there's this. Grrrr. Fat cats getting rich off the misery of their minions isn't anything new (hey, business is business) but 50 MILLION for being at the helm of a bought-out company? WHAT?!?!?! How absurd is this?

Let's take a little trip down fanciful lane together, just to check out the absurdity: If I won the lottery, and it paid out 50 million dollars, and I gave up half for taxes, there would be 25 million left over. This is CASH MONEY, to do with as I please. At my current net pay rate, I wouldn't have to work for....um......well, after a few mental calculations it's clear that I wouldn't ever have to work again and in fact I could spend at least twice as much as I do now and I still wouldn't have to work a day in my life again, ever. In fact, my heirs for at least 2 generations probably wouldn't have to work, EVER, even if they spent twice as much as I do right now, and that's not counting any interest the money might make.

Twenty-five million dollars will carry a lot of people a long way into the future, is what I'm saying.

Twenty-five million dollars is what's known colloquially as a metric shit-ton of money. Former CEO of Schering-Plough Fred Hassan made 50 million dollars when Merck bought Schering out. Fred Hassan was at the time probably already richer than Midas given his work history, and very likely didn't NEED that money, but clearly didn't turn the offer of a metric shit ton of money down. Lucky Lucky Fred.

Begs the question: What do you figure the regular working stiffs got when THEY got laid off? Did THEY get enough money to live the rest of their lives on just for being booted out the door? Did THEY get a golden parachute big enough to offer complete and total confidence that no matter what happened, they would have enough to live on for perpetuity? Did THEY roll into the next job pretty as you please, while sitting on the Board of Directors of innumerable other companies, thereby earning a nice tidy income to supplement to ridiculous amount of money they'd just been given to leave their jobs? No, they did not. Poor unlucky working people.

Each person laid off from that company who wasn't in the higher echelons of management most likely walked away with a severance package that would cover their expenses for a few months, while Fred and the other denizens of the upper chambers roll around in so much cash they have hundred-dollar bills wedged into their ass cheeks and they floss with fifties. Looking at the financials referenced in the CNN article, you can see that Freddie walked away with 33 times his yearly salary (of about 1.5 million bucks!) in severance. Note: this does not include the stocks and options granted to him, with are worth approximately 10 times his years salary.

Yes, I do believe that if someone offered my 33 times my yearly salary to leave my job, I think I'd have to say 'yes.' Add to that 10-fold my yearly salary in stocks and options I'd be shouting "HELL YES" so loudly I might hurt myself.

But nobody is ever going to offer me that kind of dough, because I'm a bottom-dweller, an average Jane, a working stiff of the most common variety who would be turned out with 6 weeks of pay and not much else.

And now I'm fuming mad at the inequity, and what's more I'm mad at myself for not clawing my way to the top of any given career ladder so I could suck at the teat of fiduciary largesse like the other movers and shakers. Because flossing with cash money and pulling big dollars out of my butt crack sound a whole lot better to me than a few weeks of payout and the unemployment line.

Gah!

GAH!

And thus, my transformation into a disgruntled old lady is complete.

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I'd better stop now. With my dander this high up I might start in on any old topic and we'd be here all day.

Y'all have better things to do, I'm sure.