Shit Zoo

Couple things or so I wanted to mention about recent Katers vlogs before I move on to something else.

First is the fact that Kate is in Vegas again with her dad, and I gotta admit, the vlogs have been more enjoyable to watch again.  With these last few videos, I've actually clicked on them not long after seeing them pop up, as opposed to letting them sit in my notifications for possibly days before getting around to them.  Part of me wants to say that it's because Cory stayed behind, and maybe Kate's more herself when she's just with her dad.  But I also kinda enjoyed the ones when they were visiting Cory's family too.  So maybe I'm just bored of the monotony of their apartment life, I dunno.

Second thing I wanted to mention was in the recent episode where Kate bought the hat or whatever it was for that girl she saw in the gift shop.  At first, I thought that was a pretty nice thing of her to do.  And I do still think that, don't get me wrong.  But later on, when it crossed my mind again, I realized how my parents and I might have reacted to a stranger buying me something like that.  While being generous is a good thing, I don't think my parents would have really appreciated someone buying me something without their permission, and certainly something so costly.  And in the case of this girl, obviously her mother had been trying to teach her financial responsibility, which might have resulted in the situation playing out a bit differently had she asked the mother first.  Instead, the girl got a rather expensive item responsibility-free.  But worse than that, her mother was likely feeling embarrassed at being barely able to have bought this for her child by herself, along with from knowing a stranger was watching this and pitying them enough to buy something so costly.  Some people are very prideful and refuse to take charity, some to the point of feeling insult.  You never know who that's going to be, so I would be a bit wary before offering something so expensive to a young person, and most especially when having not asked permission to do so.  But, it was still a nice thing to do, and I don't want to pick at her for it too much.  Just, you know, take other peoples' feelings into consideration too.  Sometimes not being able to afford something is a lesson young people need to learn, and helps shape them to be more responsible with money as adults.

The last thing to mention is something I just saw on Facebook.  Kate is determined to have a Shih Tzu, and with quite a specific laundry list of expectations about the particular animal she wants, from shedding to barking restrictions.  So she found a breeder who can supposedly give her one.  That immediately set off my hypocrisy detector, because Kate has always been a strong proponent of shelters, and to avoid breeders and pet stores.  Not to mention, I believe she herself was burned by a breeder giving her a sickly animal once upon a time.  So Kate seems to be trying to justify her current actions by commenting that this woman is "very supportive of adopting from animal shelters when you can."  Irrelevant!  The women breeds animals!  Give me a break.  She's just being sympathetic of Kate's feelings on the matter in order to make a sale.  If the woman really felt this way, she should be taking in strays or shelter animals for people to adopt, not breeding new animals into the world for people with very picky expectations of what they want in a dog, while yet another unadopted shelter dog gets put to sleep.  This really kinda bugs me, to be honest.  It's one thing for random strangers to give business to breeders, but for Kate to do it is just simply ridiculous.  I honestly don't want to hear any more from her about donating to animal charities or getting shelter animals when she's too hypocritical to practice what she preaches.  Come on.


Anyhow, enough about that.  I actually was going to comment on peoples' naivety concerning the importance of money after seeing some of peoples' comments on a recent Wheezy Waiter daily vlog.  Since this post is already getting a bit long, I'll just get right to the point: a lot of people are just stupid about money. 

You see, some people either grow up with money in their hands and never learn how hard it is to actually earn or keep it.  Other people truly think that money is a bad thing and that society should/could exist without it.  You will often see both of these kinds of people, along with a few other generally naive individuals not really fitting into either category who just want to appear as if they have this profound understanding of something, who will go around insisting that money isn't important.  They go on and on about how it's the root of all evil, how it doesn't buy happiness, blah blah.

But you know what money does buy?  It buys food.  It buys water.  It pays your mortgage.  It pays the taxes for the land your home even sits on.  It buys gasoline.  It pays your car payment.  It pays your medical and pharmacy bills.  It buys your entertainment.  It pays for your internet which allows you to make these kinds of ludicrous comments to begin with.  You can't barter for everything, and certainly not if you want to live in the 21st century.  Your ISP doesn't want your chickens for six months of internet service. 


Money is important, folks.  Nothing is free in this world; not even water (or rain).  Money does buy happiness, but not necessarily in the life-fulfilling way some people hope.  Money buys you peace of mind, which has an extreme impact on your happiness.  If you make $15k a year and have countless medical bills and general debt looming over your head, you're going to be a much happier person if you make $250k+ a year and can actually pay all of these on time and go to your next appointment or hospital visit without concern.  And knowing you can buy your kids what they want for their birthday or Christmas, or buy your wife/husband that anniversary gift you think they deserve, gives you a strong sense of satisfaction.  There's certainly a limit on what amount of money can make you happy.  But the fact is, that amount is still usually more than a lot of people make.  If you make minimum wage working full-time in America, you're still living below the poverty line.

So this blind cynicism that money is a bad thing is just immature.  Either you have too much of it, and/or you're out of touch with its importance.  Currency was created for a reason, and it's because not everyone who has something you want or need necessarily needs the goods or services you yourself can provide.  While the American dollar may not necessarily translate directly to something of value anymore (as in gold), it does still represent work performed or goods sold, which is the entire point of it in modern society.  A piece of paper still has value if society as a whole deems it so.

Anyway, that's enough of my rambling.  Probably should have broken this up into two posts, but I doubt anybody reads most of this stuff anyway!