Sixteen Volts

Even though most of the time it seems to me that all you see is violence in movies and sex on TV, occasionally the "manure chute" (as the God-fearing and stern-faced members of the Laestadius sect in Northern Finland tend to call the goggle box) provides some socially valuable programming. For example, Oprah's "debt diet" series that we tuned in with my wife, before the Oprah show went back to New Age healing and other similarly vacuous stuff that the middle-aged women seem to like.

A few times during these shows I actually ended up holding my wife's hand and thanking her for not being like the women depicted in the show. There but for the grace of God go I --- many times when I have seen men traipsing with their wives out there, I have been thinking to myself that Jesus, if I was married to her, I would most likely end up becoming a drunk and a wifebeater myself. I mean, what would there be to lose, really? Not much, for some of these men.

Now, I personally can't understand how the simple concept of always spending less than you earn seems to be so totally alien to many people, but I guess that it just is. With nothing better to do, we also watched earlier today a similar-themed Life network show "Til Debt Do Us Part", which is about a financial expert who swoops in to some family that is drowning in debt to help turn their financial ship around. Some producer has been really smart to come up with a show like this: the episodes probably cost next to nothing to film and produce, yet they contain lots of multifaceted human drama that most viewers can instantly relate to. Real life in the modern Western society is an interesting obstacle course that measures the cognitive abilities of all participants.

During the commercial break, we chatted about this and that and then I ended up making an interesting bet that I shall now announce here in my blog so that I can't slide out of it. I declared that I will be able to live the next two weeks without spending a penny on anything. I am allowed to live in our place and eat what I can find in the freezer, fridge and the cupboards, but other than that, I can't buy anything at all with cash, debit or credit card. No matter what it is, if my willpower breaks and I end up spending even a penny, I lose the bet. It will certainly be interesting to see how this works, so I shall occasionally report on the progress of this bet in my blog.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Sunday, July 23, 2006 at 5:24 PM