The ultimate boxymoron...


Motor Age-online has said that Porsche's Boxster is their ''entry level'' automobile. Hahahahaha. Tell me it ain't so. An ''entry level'' Porsche? If you're one of those rare individuals who can afford a Porsche Boxster with your loose pocket change, the foregoing will have no meaning to you whatsoever...put down the article and go for a sail. If even the thought of being able to afford a Porsche of any model is out of your realm then, for you, this piece may hold only a minor interest. Now, if you're the struggling individual who has just about died of stress and exhaustion trying to pay off the banks, contractors, electricians, etc. who just helped you finish your ''starter castle'' on a crowded, formally verdant and wooded half acre lot in a modest neighborhood where nobody wanted a ''starter castle'' to begin with and they now hold a quiet resentful disdain for your arrogance, then you might want to read on. Despite the added burden, you just had to have the Boxster in that short little driveway to complete your ensemble. Then, you discover you've just purchased an ''entry level'' vehicle on the road to snobbery...you've sold your soul and clawed your way back to the bottom of the heap. You've joined the ranks of the poor rich. That, my friend ...is a Boxymoron.

Deep down inside we all know you had really intended deep down in your heart to give some of your hardly earned moolah to the needy and help make the world a better place to live and help eradicate that oh-so-hard line between the halves and the halve-nots rather than destroy the 23 extra beautifully matured trees it took to construct the monstrosity that was way too big for you anyway and fill it with gaudy big ticket items that you would trade in way before their time just to make sure our burgeoning landfills were kept fruitful with your detritus and then suck up all the electricity and water possible to help us maintain high consumption of precious and oh-so healthy nuclear fuel and lower the precious aquifers. I am on the verge of entrepreneuring a brand new business...it called Deconstruction. It involves taking a casa like the glumly aforementioned and making two or three houses out of the materials that made up all the extra space that was not needed in the first place. The new houses would look more proportionate to the land they were built on and they would be sold at a reasonable price to people who were perhaps struggling, but making ends meet. People who perhaps work in a corporation where the jobs were not being eliminated because it was cheaper to make their product somewhere else. A corporation that was not top heavy with rapacious management types who only cared how the company's performance looked on paper. I used to work in such a place that was not like that... where a new manager would come in and say he could make and sell a gazillion units in six months....2 years later he would have only sold 17 units and lost the firm millions of bucks...so, the company would do the only thing it could in such a case, promote him and move him into a different division. Its hard to avoid conversations with people in which the talk doesn't eventually lead to some sort of discussion about omnipresent greed in one form or another...corporate greed, excessive taxation, etc. It baffles me to realize that perhaps more than 95 percent of the people in the USA know about these practices and yet they still prevail. There is some food for thought here. I love the way it all gets so publicized. It appears that even if you're caught being corrupt and excessive that national exposure doesn't stop the practice...it serves only as a reminder that you should be more careful in the future and strive to do better at hiding your wrong doings. A note to sleazy lawyers here (not all lawyers, just the sleazy ones)...please don't get in touch with me. So here I am, retired at 55 from a failing corporation...my pay eliminated, so what is the first thing that happens...my income goes to zero and my health insurance costs go from $110 a month to $780 on an 18 month COBRA plan (COBRA is an intermediary device that allows you to get only mildly screwed on the installment plan). Now, almost 18 months later my corporate vocation prospects still look bleak and my COBRA plan is about to bite the dust, so now what...I am told my premiums will probably soar to over two grand a month. I guess I'm one of those old fashioned types who believe the costs should go the other way in this particular situation. My observations tell me that the only other alternative is to wipe out my assets, go broke and let welfare pay my medical bills. The strange part is that this logic makes sense to many of our senators and congresspeople. I know it makes sense to the insurance corporations and the recipients of their largesse. My mind is truly boggled now. I like to keep this column based on solely on incisive discussions of art and entrepreneurial acumen, so I guess I'll go sculpt a bit and let my troubled mind just wander and forget, for a short time anyway, about the abundant and glorious society that we've created for our future generations and their inherent right to Truth, Justice, and the American Way. No boxymorons for me.



Uploaded to The Zephyr website November 13, 2002

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