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The Corner Gas Station

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By M. Snarky

In 1979 I was basically a broke, skinny, long-haired, hot-headed, smart-ass 18-year-old punk between jobs. I was also earnestly looking for employment in the L.A. Times classifieds, but the economy wasn’t doing so great so there weren’t many jobs available. I eventually took a job at the Union 76 gas station at the northwest corner of Whitsett Avenue and Vanowen Street in North Hollywood, California, because, thankfully, my brother Scott was already working there as a mechanic, and he got me the job by word-of-mouth. The pay was $3.50 per hour. Don’t laugh. Granted it wasn’t much money, but at least it was above the minimum wage and enough to buy food and make rent.

I’ve managed to maintain some of that hot-headed smart-ass punk attitude, albeit nowadays is it mostly reserved for the people who deserve it; like the ones that drive like a-holes, and the ones that cut in line, and the ones that bring 20-items to the 10-item or less express checkout line at the grocery store.

I quickly found out that you meet some very interesting people at the corner gas station.

The gas station owner was a man named George Christie, a divorced, cranky, chain-smoking, coffee chugging, foul-mouthed WWII army captain who was only about 5-feet-8-inches tall. Scott was 6-2, and I was 6-feet even, and so Mr. Christie always had to look up to us when he talked to us. This seemed to perpetually piss him off and make him swear more than usual, meaning that every third word was an expletive instead of every fourth word. In one single sentence, George Christie would string together more expletives than the saltiest of Navy sailors could do in an entire year. George Christie made swearing an art form.

Mr. Christie’s primary job was a Southern Pacific Railroad (SPRR) locomotive engineer working the graveyard shift and the gas station was his little side hustle. I don’t believe the man ever slept for more than four hours at a stretch. Mr. Christie had a socially awkward teenage son (the name of whom I cannot recall), and his son had a governess with him at all times. She was a homely, chubby, middle-aged woman and it didn’t appear to us that the son had any special needs that required any, um, governing, however, Mr. Christie loved to brag about his sexual activities with the old, fat, ugly matron, which—to use the vernacular of the day—was grody to the max. I’ll spare the reader the sordid graphic details that Mr. Christie delighted in telling us.

By today’s standards that gas station was the epitome of an old school operation. Us “Gas Jockeys” wore matching navy-blue uniforms with the Union 76 logo on the right side of our chest and our name patch on the left side of our chest. No snacks or drinks or rolling hot dogs of questionable age and origin for sale; only gas, oil, a handful of basic car parts and basic car repairs and maintenance services. There was one self-service and one full-service island. Each island had two pumps with two hoses each—one pump was for regular gas and the other pump was for premium. Theoretically, we could be pumping gas for up to eight cars at once, but that never happened. There was a pneumatic black rubber tube that ran across all of the service driveways which rang a bell inside the two-car service bay when a car drove over the tube, alerting us that someone had pulled in. This is when would jump into action.

Most customers paid cash, and a small percentage of them used credit cards, including an exclusive Union 76 gas card with the distinctive orange ball logo. Generally speaking, the people with credit cards drove nice late model cars. I foolishly applied for one of these gas cards thinking I would have an advantage by being an employee of a Union 76 gas station, but it was declined due to insufficient credit history—my FICO score was stuck at 0.

We had to use these infernal manual imprint machines for the credit cards—the ones where you first insert the credit card into a slot at the top of the machine and then you place a blank, Union 76 branded pre-punched serial numbered three-layer carbon copy receipt sheet over the index pins on the left-hand side, lay the sheet over the credit card, and then slide the imprint roller over the entire assemblage from left to right, making a distinct shook-shook sound. This system did not work flawlessly. The machine would jam frequently and sometimes the imprint was off by quite a bit requiring a re-imprint. Mr. Christie was so frugal that he tracked the receipts and made us pay a dime for each one of them that were wasted. Definitely overpriced and probably illegal, but we didn’t know any better. There was no written company policy, or employee handbook, or HR department, or mid-level manager to file our grievances with: There was only Mr. Christie, and he was the self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner of his gas station fiefdom.

After imprinting, we would manually write down how many gallons were pumped, the price per gallon, and the total price that was displayed in the gas pump window onto the right-hand column of the receipt and then ask the customer to verify the total and then ask them to sign the receipt on the line, then we would tear off the top copy and hand it over to the customer. Next, we would tear off the middle carbon copy sheet and throw it away, and then ring up the total on the digital NCR cash register which would print out another receipt that we stapled to the imprint receipt, and then finally insert the bonded receipts into a slot in the front of the cash drawer. It was a spectacularly idiotic time-consuming tedious process, especially by today’s chipped credit card transaction standards, but at the time it was relatively state-of-the-art. Every now and then a nice lady would tip me a buck or two in cash before driving off which, speaking for myself here, would go unclaimed and directly into my pocket.

Cash was an entirely different animal. Mr. Christie would leave a cash drawer in the safe containing exactly $147.50 in the following denominations and quantities:
$20 x 3
$10 x 4
$5 x 4
$1 x 10
$10 – roll of quarters
$5 – roll of dimes
$2 – roll of nickels
.50¢ – roll of pennies

At the 9:00 PM closing hour, we would print out the cash register receipt total for the day, count the cash and write down the totals in an old oil-stained dog-eared ledger, and take the daily gallon readings off of the pumps and enter those numbers in their own separate columns. We would deduct the opening cash of $147.50 and do some basic mathematics using only plusses and minuses—no spreadsheets back then, just a very basic 10-key digital calculator…and you better have it right down to the penny or Mr. Christie would give you an earful of the most artfully contrived personal insults and expletives you ever heard in one breath, reinforcing his art form status seemingly without much effort. And yes, he would deduct any shortcomings from our paycheck because his default mindset was that we were all a bunch of thieves ripping him off at every opportunity which, except for me pocketing unclaimed tips, was totally untrue. Besides, I don’t believe that this would technically qualify as theft.

Other tasks to complete at closing time were locking up the water and air hoses in the metal bins at the end of the islands, disconnecting and rolling up the black rubber pneumatic hoses for the bell, locking the pumps, turning off the circuit breakers for the gas pumps and the signage, empty the blue tinted windshield washing fluid from their bins, and putting the cash in the safe. We got so good at our closing time routine that by 9:15 the gas station was a ghost town.

When dealing with cash there are scams that fall just outside of blatant robbery, for example, the Quick Change Scam, or what we called a Murphy. One day, a quick change artist came up to me to ask for change for the bus. As he was going through his rapid-fire iterations of his very polished change-this-for-that routine, I sensed that something just wasn’t adding up, so I quickly closed the cash drawer and asked him to show me the cash that he had in his hand. The bastard ran off at the speed of an Olympic sprinter. Fortunately, I only got Murphy’d for $10. The damage could have been far worse.

Mr. Christie was not impressed with what I thought was quick thinking, and fortunately he did not make me pay for the loss (which, by the way, was totally out of character for him), instead, he called his L.A.P.D detective friend and had me fill out a report over the phone with the following information:

Date: June 1, 1979
Time: Around 19:00
Location: 12505 Vanowen Street, North Hollywood, CA 91605
Phone Number: 606-0842
Alleged Crime: Theft.
Perpetrator Description: Caucasian, male, approximately 30-years old, 5-feet 9-inches tall, 140 pounds, long wavy black hair, brown eyes, black Chevron style mustache (like Burt Reynolds), blue bandana headband, white Led Zeppelin concert tee shirt, Levi’s 501 denim jeans, brown Dingo boots. I had inadvertently described at least 2-million men living in Los Angeles.

The next kind of thieves were the drive-offs. These lowlifes (who were always men, in case you were wondering) would pull into the full-serve island, flash some cash, and ask for a fill-up. In the 5-second window when we’d go to hang up the pump nozzle after filling their tank, they would quickly start their engine and drive off as fast as they could, often doing a burnout on the way out.

One time a guy t-boned a car on Whitsett boulevard as he recklessly sped out of the gas station driveway. The collision crushed his radiator and disabled his car. When the cops came for the accident, we told them what had happened, and the jerk was promptly arrested. Oh, and he had some weed in his possession too. Talk about instant karma. I hope he enjoyed his stay at the county jail.

Ironically, gas was only about $0.88 per gallon back then, and a fuel tank on a mid-sized 1970’s car was about 15-gallons. Even if the tank was bone-dry, a fill up would have only cost $13.20, which is not an amount of money worth going to jail for. Truthfully, I can’t think of any amount of money under a million bucks that is worth going to jail for. Clearly, the drive-off guys were just a bunch of dumbasses.

Fortunately, I never had a guy shove a gun in my face and rob me. Franky, it probably would not have turned out well for the robber with so many big tools and sharp things lying around a repair shop plus the readily available Louisville Slugger baseball bat hiding on the left side of the cash register stand that was always at our disposal, you know, just in case.

We had a greasy AM/FM transistor radio in the service bay area next to the cash register stand, and Scott and I would listen to local FM rock stations 95.5 KLOS, 94.7 KMET, or sometimes 106.7 KROQ, all of which Mr. Christie despised. “How can you fuckers listen to that shit!” was his typical reaction. He preferred Sinatra, “A real artist,” but Sinatra was not getting any air play in 1979. So, the moment Mr. Christie entered the gas station, he’d walk directly over to the radio and change the station to KNX 1070 AM. It was 24/7 news, weather, sports, and Bill Keene rattling off traffic reports and Sigalerts every 10-minutes or so. This was beyond boring for an 18-year-old. You bet your ass that the instant Mr. Christie left the gas station for the day, that radio was back to blasting rock ‘n’ roll. Indeed, there was an ongoing undeclared radio war between management and labor.

In practice, a gas station essentially operates as a retail business because you are selling goods like gasoline, quarts of oil, oil filters, v-belts, radiator caps, locking gas caps (there was an oil crisis going on and gas theft via siphoning was a thing), and windshield wiper blades, plus selling services like oil changes, tires, brake jobs, and tune-ups. This is where the real money was, and Mr. Christie encouraged us to upsell everything at any opportunity, but dishonesty was not allowed at any time. In other words, don’t take advantage of anyone.

We got very good at upselling at the full-serve island. It almost wasn’t fair because most of the full-serve customers were women who simply didn’t want to get their hands dirty. We would start by asking them if we could check the air pressure in their tires, and the answer was always, “Yes.” While checking the air pressure, we would note if any of the tires were unreasonably low which would indicate a slow leak. It was $20 to patch a hole in the tire. We would also check the tire tread for uneven wear or baldness and if any of them were in bad shape, we would sell one or two or sometimes four tires.

Then we would ask if they wanted us to check the oil, again, the answer was, “Yes.” If the oil was low, a quart would cost $1. If a v-belt was loose or starting to fray, we would suggest replacing it which would set them back $25. We would also check the air filter, radiator hoses, transmission fluid, brake fluid, and battery fluid levels, and windshield wiper blades, all of which were upsell opportunities. Scott and I were making a ton of money for the irascible captain who never really seemed to appreciate our efforts. We certainly didn’t benefit from it financially. The only benefit we got was that it broke up the monotony of a typical day of pumping gas at the corner station, which, to summarize went something like this:

Standing around.
Ding-ding!
Pumping gas.
Handling cash and credit card transactions.
Standing around smoking a cigarette.
Ding-ding!
Pumping gas.
Handling more cash and credit card transactions.
Standing around smoking cigarettes and talking about sports.
Ding-ding!
Pumping gas.
Handling more cash and credit card transactions.
Standing around smoking a cigarette and talking about the weekend.
Ding-ding!
Well, you get the idea—this was monotony defined.

We had the regulars too, and they came from every walk of life. There were a mix of blue-collar men and white-collar men. There were shy, pretty, young college aged girls, and flirty older married women. There were twitchy sketchy drug dealers selling everything from crank (which was an early form of meth) to cocaine to weed to prescription drugs. We had daytime drunks, families in station wagons, and run-of-the-mill surly jerks.

One day about a week before the 4th of July, a man pulled up in a massive land yacht (also known as an Oldsmobile Delta 88 Custom Cruiser station wagon). After filling his tank and paying for the gas, he asked me, “Would you be interested in buying some Mexican fireworks fresh from the border?” The resounding answer was “Yes!” He motioned with his hand to follow him, and he walked me to the back of the station wagon. He rolled down the tinted electric back window with his key, dropped the tailgate down, and pulled back an old thick canvas drop cloth with stains all over it to reveal the arsenal of illegal fireworks that lay beneath. My god, it was a glorious mix of fireworks of every description! Everything from firecrackers to M100s to Buzz Bombs to real Roman candles to small and large bottle rockets. My palms were sweating thinking about how I was going to celebrate Independence Day with a bang! I motioned Scott to come over and we both bought about $20 worth of fireworks each.

The downside to this was that while we were exuberantly celebrating the 4th of July in the middle of our street with our Mexican fireworks, we underestimated the major differences between the weak Red Devil Safe and Sane fireworks, and the powerful unsafe and insane Mexican fireworks. Perhaps it was the flaming Roman candle projectiles hurling over the rooftops that prompted someone to call the cops on us. Fortunately, our fireworks arsenal was depleted by the time the LAPD rolled up, so they got a big fat nothing burger for their enforcement efforts, but this did not prevent them from haranguing us.

On slow nights we would use some of the motor oil collected from the oil changes for the best smoky burnouts you can imagine, often engulfing the gas station in a thick cloud of white smoke. The residents in the apartment building did not appreciate this. We would also work on our older cars which were always in need of mechanical or cosmetic attention or an upgrade to the audio system.

I didn’t work at the gas station for long. By the fall, I was working at Floyd Floor Mats, in North Hollywood, CA for $3.75 per hour. A lowly .25¢ per hour more you might be thinking, but it was in fact a 7% raise. This job consisted of cutting out various floormat shapes from commercial grade carpet using templates and sewing on edges and silk-screening BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Range Rover logos on them. I didn’t particularly love this job, and it lasted only a couple of months before I left for a better paying gig.

The old gas station is gone now, replaced with a shady looking used car lot that offers 100% financing. I’m sure the terms are fair. I wonder if the old burnout marks are still on the asphalt. I’m certain that Mr. Christie expired long before the turn of the 21st century.

In retrospect, Mr. Christie did teach me the importance of integrity and honesty. He also taught me how to use excessive expletives to communicate which doesn’t always go over well during PowerPoint presentations.

Instagram: @m.snarky
Blog: https://msnarky.com
©2025. All rights reserved.

Channeling Ray Bradbury: 52 Stories in 52 Weeks – A Glance Back

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By M. Snarky

Done. Okay, so it ended up being 52 stories in 64 weeks—sincere apologies for the unplanned additional time. Life happens. Although I missed my self-imposed target by 12 weeks, I still managed to crank out all 52 stories! The following statement may be arguable, but I believe that my writing improved over the duration, however, I’ll have to leave that assessment up to the reader.

What was your favorite story? Please comment! The most popular one will get some additional notes from me regarding the background, inspiration, and my writing and editing processes.

In the meantime, I have several dozen other short story outlines in the queue (with others rattling about in my skull but not yet committed to paper). I plan to publish these stories over the coming weeks, the frequency of which will be one story every two weeks or so.

Teaser for the next post: The Gas Station. This is an elaboration of one of my many vocations as noted on my Odd Jobs post from 4/18/2025. You meet some interesting people pumping gas. I think you’ll like it.

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

An Anonymous Coward

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Sydney at rest.

By M. Snarky

Story 52 of 52

Well, we finally got through escrow hell and have moved into a community in the 805, one which we have been desiring since they were built in 2004. We’ve been living here for less than a week but have already apparently ruffled some feathers regarding our Aussie-Doodle dog Sydney and her “nonstop” barking.

Mind you, at our previous residence, we put Sydney outside in the backyard during the day when we went to work. Never had one complaint in seven years. Generally, she only barks at people when they come to the house.

At our new digs, we went with the same feed-the-dog-and-put-the-dog-outside-and-go-to-work morning routine believing that Sydney would be fine in the new place. Well, apparently not, at least, according to someone in the community who has chosen to hide their identity.

On Tuesday November 4, there was an envelope on the patio that someone had tossed over the fence, with “C’Mon, Man!” hand-written with a felt tip marking pen on the outside. Inside the envelope was a printed note with the following verbatim message duplicated in bold 48-point font here for authenticity:

Your dog started barking at 5:30 this morning and never came up for Air. You need to do something about that please. 5:30 in the morning nonstop!!!!!!! it’s now going on hour three

Yeah, lots of yelling and anger there plus some bad grammar and punctuation, but they did say please so there is a razor thin level of politeness. No knock on the door; no name; no phone number; no address; no discourse between adults—just pure rage. Kim didn’t leave for work until 6:30 that morning while Sydney was outside, and Sydney didn’t bark at all, so that first point is obviously a fabrication. We’re not here to piss anybody off, so we pivoted (as one should in these types of situations) and changed Sydney’s feeding schedule and kept her in the house during the day for the last two days.

However, on Thursday, November 6, there was a notice from the city’s “Animal Safety Licensing” division hanging on the front doorknob with two of the three boxes checked and a few lines underlined by hand to emphasize something of great importance:

☒ An officer of the Animal Safety called today regarding a complaint that a dog or dogs living at the above address are creating a noise disturbance in violation of City ordinance. We request you cooperation in observing the provisions of the City Code Chapter 5, Article 1, Section 5-2, Subsection (A) 7, which states: The utterance of barks, cries, whines or other sounds of any household pet which are so loud, so frequent and continued over so long a period of time as to unreasonably disturb the peace and quiet of two or more unrelated residences.

Failure to comply in reducing the animal noise could result in an administrative hearing to determine whether the action of the animal(s) constitutes a public nuisance.

☒ ANIMAL LICENSE VIOLATION (Chapter 5, Sec. 5.55)

“Every person who owns a dog or cat over the age of four months…shall obtain a current license and license tag…Any person who violates this section is guilty of an infraction.”

You must comply and license the animal by 11/16/2025.

C’mon, man! Now this person has called the K9 cops on us too, great. They didn’t even have the courage to file a complaint with the HOA first like a rational, reasonable person would, I think, because they don’t want to be identified. Granted I already have a bone to pick with petty money grabbing city ordinances like animal licensing, but one must abide to avoid further complications.

I’ll have to admit that I love the idea that Sydney was barking at the Animal Safety officer the entire time that he/she was standing at the door filling out the complaint: It would be sort of poetic.

Some research on animal licensing in our zip code indicated that we have 30-days to get licenses for our pets, so it’s clear to me that the Animal Safety stooge, er, officer, either doesn’t know the law or is openly harassing us.

Anyway, this anonymous coward person is either an old, bitter, retired crank, or a snooty Karen type with nothing better to do than stir things up between neighbors.

Either way, I will do my best to be polite if I ever do meet him or her (for the time being, anyway). The problem with anonymous cowards is that they are very good at being anonymous cowards for they have been practicing the skill their entire life.

Personally, I have never been very good at being intentionally anonymous. I prefer a spoken face-to-face kinetic conversation where voice tone and body language become part of the open two-way communication between adults. These additional queues are more easily interpreted as either friendly, neutral, or openly hostile. You’ll succinctly know how things stand communicating this way.

Anonymity, however, is the polar opposite of a face-to-face conversation. By design it is a one-way communication method—one that makes it all too easy to completely misinterpret someone’s intent as they conceal who they are. They are ghosts. My imagination tends to quickly run wild…and dark. In other words, this anonymity is a chickenshit method of communication.

Given the opportunity, someone might anonymously deflate all four tires of someone else’s vehicle.

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

Escrow is Hell

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Story 51 of 52

By M. Snarky

Selling or buying a house should not be as complicated or as protracted as it is, but this is what happens when the regulators make up the rules and regulations, and, um, regulate things. It appears to me that the rules are primarily intended to extract as much money as possible from your bank account during the process. For example, this is the fee list from the house we are currently financing:

Title – Closing/Escrow fee
Title – Courier/Messenger Fee
Title – Document preparation fee
Title – Loan Tie In Fee
Title – E-Recording Fee
Appraisal fee
Lender’s Title Insurance Fee
Owner’s Title Insurance Fee
Archive Fee
Messenger Fee
Wire Fee – Escrow
Wire Fee – Title
Originator Compensation to Lender Fee
Underwriting Fee
Credit Report Fee
Tax Service Fee
Recording Fees
County Taxes

Courier and messenger fees—really? All of the paperwork thus far has been electronic! Anyway, to comply with all of these rules and regulations, escrow is part and parcel of buying and selling real estate and is something that cannot be avoided: It is deliberately and unavoidably baked into the process, I think, mostly to benefit the banks who apparently consider real estate buyers and sellers as ATM’s.

Now imagine this: You’re in Tiffany & Co. to purchase an engagement and wedding ring set for the love of your life. The ambient music is pleasant, and your inner voice sings along with the tune as you tap your foot in time. You peer into the expertly lit glowing cases of exquisite gleaming jewelry and spot the perfect set.

The Tiffany’s associate pours you a glass of Cristal champagne and describes the ring to you in detail. She talks about the rare jewels and the platinum setting and the quality and the famous Italian designer and slips in that the traditional budget guidelines suggest spending 2–3 months’ salary. For a man that makes $100K a year, this “suggestion” equates to $25,000, that is, as long as you don’t cheap out. Makes me wonder if the jewelry industry invented this budget guideline. Also, $25K seems like a lot of money for something that fits on a finger and has no other practical use than to indicate to society that someone is married, happily or otherwise.

You begrudgingly agree to the exorbitant spending guideline, but since you don’t have $25K cash sitting around in your checking account, you opt for Tiffany’s financing at 25% APR for 5-years. You fill out the 75-page application (is it really necessary to take your fingerprints and ask for your blood type, dental records, and sexual orientation?) and provide the requisite three personal references, you know, just in case you turn out to be a deadbeat and they have to send out Vito and Tony to, um, collect the merchandise.

The Tiffany’s associate never talks about how you’re also financing the sales tax, and it just becomes a line item on the contract:

Fancy Ring: $25,000.
9% Sales Tax: $2,250.
Net Sale to Finance at the Bank of Tiffany: $27,250.

The financial reality is that you’re going to pay $799.82 per month for 5-years, and now that fancy $27,250 ring is going to cost you $47,989.41. I certainly hope the marriage outlasts the monthly payments. Realistically, you can buy a decent new car for $47,989.41, which seems to be much more practical purchase.

Three hours later, the paperwork is done, the contract is signed, and the fancy ring goes into the fancy Tiffany Blue box…but instead of handing the ring over to you, the associate puts the ring into the safe for 30-days.

In that 30-days, they’ll comb through your application. They’ll call your bank, and call your references, and call your boss and ask if you’ve ever been employee of the month. They’ll call your doctor and make sure that you didn’t lie about your blood type. They’ll call your kindergarten teacher and ask about your attendance and academic records. They’ll call your auto mechanic to make sure that your car maintenance hasn’t started slipping. They’ll even call your mother to ask if she approves of the person you intend to marry.

Indeed, you do not get what you were hoping for—like that killer dopamine hit or the instant gratification rush of holding the Tiffany & Co. ring of your dreams in your sweaty little hands NOW! Instead, you get vetted first, and are forced to wait for delayed gratification later. If everything checks out, on day 30 you get the ring and might possibly live happily ever after. If not, you get nothing but a negative hit on your FICO score.

The previous scenario would be ridiculous and outrageous if retail purchases actually had to go into escrow, right? However, when it comes to buying a house, this is exactly how escrow works—you agree to pay for a house now, but you do not get the house until much later, that is, if you’re lucky enough to survive what the Real Estate Industrial Complex throws at you. This is how escrow operates.

In the meantime, while “in escrow” (interchangeable with “in exile,” if you ask me) you are filling out reams of paperwork, and it just keeps coming at you faster and faster, and you find yourself jumping through flaming hoops like a circus chimpanzee on Heisenberg’s Blue Sky crystal meth. You’ll have little time for anything else. You may need to resort to using performance enhancing drugs just to keep up with it…Blue Sky, anyone?

Throughout this entire escrow process, there are all sorts of tripwires and pitfalls and land mines that can blow the entire deal up in your face. One missed deadline or a bad report or one lost document or one missed signature or one single disagreeable person in the chain will bring the entire gargantuan escrow machine to a grinding, screeching halt. Of course, everyone will blame you.

Then there are the inspections of various sorts, and the appraisals, banks, lenders, insurance, current bank and savings account balances, current credit card balances, three months of banking records and five years of tax returns, plus all of the city, county, state, and federal forms to fill out, and more contingencies than you can shake a stick at, all of which have additional fees, of course.

Then you have the throngs of brokers, agents, sellers, buyers, contractors, CPAs, etc., all with their hands out as you walk down the long line of them doling out their various fees. They are all very friendly and professional and smile and shake your hand and congratulate you as they extract their cut from you. I tried standing at the end of the line to get mine too, but by the time I got there, the bank account balance was $0.

I blame the lawyers and the bankers and the politicians for purposefully wedging themselves between me and the purchase of a house and forcing me to pay all of them while I’m also obligated to endure all of this escrow paper shuffling voodoo nonsense. Makes me wonder what the environmental impact of escrow is. I’m guessing it’s the size of a house.

When escrow hopefully eventually “closes” (suggesting here that escrow is in-fact an open wound), there will be much relief. It will also be a time to celebrate surviving and enduring the hellish escrow process, er, change that to, it will also be a time to celebrate a new home. Cheers to that!

Oh, and I hope the person who invented escrow lived a short and miserable life.

Instagram: @m.snarky
Blog: https://msnarky.com
©2025. All rights reserved.

Musings on Smartphones and Dumb People

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Story 48 of 52

By M. Snarky

You see it every single day here in Los Angeles: People staring at their smartphones while they are supposedly working, or while walking down the street with their dog, or while driving their car (as they dangerously weave between the lane lines), or while at a Taylor Swift concert. These people are usually completely oblivious to anything that is happening around them, and so it is apparent that smartphones are great at blocking out situational awareness, perhaps by design. These people will be the first ones to go during a zombie apocalypse, and when you think about it, they are already in a semi-zombie state anyway, so it isn’t much of a stretch.

More often than not, these same people also have their Bluetooth earbuds crammed into their ear canals as tight as possible so that they can listen to music, or podcasts, or news, or Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker audio books. It is my opinion that they are intentionally tuning out the world and living inside their own personal bubbles. They never respond to you when you say “Hello” as you cross paths (making them seem rude, cold, and indifferent). They don’t hear you when you yell “Watch out!” as they blindly step onto the street while staring at the screen of their smartphone and walk directly into the oncoming path of a speeding city bus—ironically throwing themselves under the bus.

Then again, maybe it’s best to let Darwinism take its course and not interfere with the natural laws of the universe.

The headlines speak for themselves, “Man dies while taking selfie in front of a bison bull.” “Man dies falling off of parking structure while playing Pokémon GO!” “Woman dies in car crash while sexting her boyfriend.” The list goes on and on. Does this imply that smartphones are deadly? No: It only proves that there are too many dumb people walking around amongst us.

I don’t believe that smartphones have truly made people any smarter than they were before smartphones were invented, in fact, I’ll argue that the opposite is true because this has been my experience. It amazes me that even with the entire knowledge and history of the world at their fingertips—knowledge and history that previously required people to either go to a local library or ask their grandparents if they may thumb their way through their latest Encyclopedia Britannica edition—people still believe that Elvis is alive; that the earth is flat; and that the moon landing was a hoax. Indeed, cognitive dissonance is alive and well in the U.S.

I do believe that too much Internet bandwidth is consumed by the millions of pointless, viral cat and TikTok related videos du jour instead of by people seeking knowledge or facts, both of which appear to be in short supply these days. The last time I checked, knowledge and facts are still tariff free, so there is no additional cost to obtain them…and yet they languish. Half-truths, untruths, myths, rumors, and outright lies seem to rule the day.

Now that smartphones have AI capabilities, I think this is only going to accelerate the dumbing down of Americans. It’s going to be interesting to see how it progresses. I used to believe that AI in its absolute sense was isolated to city, county, state, and federal government politicians, you know, the smartest people in the room—just ask any one of them—and you can see how that turned out for us. If you believe that AI is somehow going to save us, you may only be half right because AI also has the potential to destroy us. I sense that AI will end up doing both in an endless creative destruction cycle. Buckle up, kids.

If there is a dystopian AI controlled Tyrellian evil robot future on the horizon, people won’t even look up from their smartphone screens long enough to notice. The masses will be led to their demise by means of a viral, cleverly gamified extermination program in which all of the “accidents” will seem plausible. May I suggest starting with the ones who have the most daily screen time as they pose the most danger to society? Come to think of it, this gives doomscrolling an entirely new meaning. Just kidding—obviously, it should start with the politicians.

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

Lifeguard Queen

~ msnarky ~ Leave a comment

This is an AI generated image that looks remarkably like the Lifeguard Queen of my youth.

Story 42 of 52

By M. Snarky

Late summer, 1974, North Hollywood, Calif. The walk from our apartment at 5342 Cahuenga Blvd to the North Hollywood Pool was about a mile, and for 25¢ you could swim all day. With only our towels in hand and one quarter each in our pockets (Grandma Opal Hess would say, “two-bits”), we walked directly west down the dry and dusty Union Pacific Railroad tracks that paralleled Chandler Blvd to North Hollywood Park, and then turn left at Tujunga Ave where the pool was located on the west side of the street just beyond the public parking lot. When the temperature rose above 100-degrees, it was like walking through the sweltering heat of a desert, but it was always worthwhile because I knew she would be there.

I had just turned 13, my younger brother Scott was 11-1/2, and our younger cousin Chris was 10-1/2. The three of us were accidentally representing the poor white boys of North Hollywood with our holey T-shirts, cut-off jeans, knee-high tube socks with holes in the heels and the toes and our worn out Keds and Converse sneakers. We had no food, no water, no sunscreen, and usually no extra money – not even a nickel for some bubble gum. Our parents were so broke that we would often have to resort to scouring the neighborhood for returnable soda bottles to collect enough money for the pool entry fee.

Whenever we did have any extra change, we would stop by the Winchell’s Donut House near the corner of Lankershim Blvd and Chandler because it was on the way to the pool, and we would have been foolish not to pick up a few 5¢ donuts.

At the front counter of the pool house, you handed over your hard-earned quarter to the attendant for a ticket, then you took the ticket over to the men’s side of the pool house where there was another counter. There was a hand painted sign above that counter that said, “No Cut-Off Jeans!” and, “No Swimming in Underwear!” and “No Urinating in the Pool!” There was another hand painted sign above the door that exited to the pool deck that said, “Rinse Off Before Entering Pool.” Being the ignorant youth that I was, I would have argued that the no cut-off jean policy was dumb and that the no swimming in underwear and no urinating in the pool rules were obvious, but why do I need to rinse off? But rules are rules, and in a public space they must be posted…and obeyed, that is, if you want to avoid getting kicked out.

There was this persistent rumor going around that there was a chemical in the pool water that turned bright red if you peed in it, which signals to everyone in the water around you AND the lifeguard staff that, a) you are a rule breaking savage, and b) you will be promptly removed from the pool, Pissboy will be tattooed onto your forehead, and you will be escorted off of the premises by two burly lifeguards, and banned for life from entering any of the Los Angeles County Parks & Recreation managed public pools. I will tell you unequivocally (although not without some level of embarrassment) that this was indeed just a persistent rumor that I believe was likely propagated by the lifeguard union.

Anyway, you gave the male attendant your ticket and they would hand you a mesh bag with what I can only describe as a large diaper pin that had a number stamped on the end of it which matched the stamped metal number tag attached to the bag. The first time we went to the pool I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the mesh bag or with the pin. After observing what the other men and boys did with them, I quickly figured out what to do, so I put my beat-up shoes, tube socks, T-shirt, and cut-off jeans in the bag, attached the pin to my swim shorts, and handed the bag over to the young man behind the counter who promptly hung the bag on a rack in numerical order.

Scott, Chris, and I, after rinsing off in the remarkably cold water (why was there never a hot water valve?), walked out onto the pool deck like we owned the place. Around the entire pool deck, about every ten feet or so, painted in fire engine red, was “NO RUNNING!” in huge, stenciled letters. More rules. So, with our towels draped around our necks, we briskly walked over to our favorite spot on the deck near the far southeast corner of the deep end where I could observe the high lifeguard chair from afar, which was the throne upon which my Lifeguard Queen sat.

She was a tan, brunette beauty with hazel eyes, wearing Ray Ban Aviator sunglasses, a white sun visor, and the iconic red one-piece Los Angeles County Lifeguard issued bathing suit. Being an official lifeguard, she also had the shiny metal whistle on a lanyard around her neck and a large megaphone by her side. She was a magnificent, powerful sight to behold, and I was crushing hard.

Mind you, I was not creeping on her or staring or ogling – I would simply glance over at her every now and then, hoping that one day she would notice me and smile and maybe wave at me. I had no idea what I was going to do if she ever did acknowledge me like that, but I probably would have suffered a heart attack.

I was comfortable in the water and thought that I knew how to swim, but I truly didn’t know how to swim well. You could say that I only knew how not to drown, just like most other recreational swimmers, I suppose. It wasn’t until I took professional swimming lessons decades later at Los Angeles Valley College for Ironman training with my wife Kim, that I realized how bad I was at swimming. How bad? It went something like this: On the first day of training, coach Stuart directed us (about three-dozen people) to self-seed ourselves along the pool coping thusly, “Advanced swimmers in the right-hand lanes, intermediate swimmers in the middle lanes, and beginning swimmers in the left-hand lanes.” I considered myself an intermediate swimmer and lined up in the middle lane.

Then coach Stuart said, “Okay swimmers, we’re going to split lanes for this drill in a clockwise direction, so we don’t swim into each other. Tom, Frank, Lisa, and Caroline will demonstrate this for you.” The four of them jumped into the middle lane and with a “Yip!” command from the coach, they started swimming in single file along the left-side next to the pool lane divider and when they got to the far end of the lane they turned around and came back along the right-side pool lane divider, passing each other without crashing as they swam in opposite directions.

Coach Stuart continued, “Does everyone understand this?” and we all nodded our heads in acknowledgement. “Now I want everyone to swim a few laps to warm up – Yip!” And with that, we jumped into the water and began swimming as directed. When I got back to the coaches side of the pool after a couple of laps, coach Stuart signaled me to the coping and asked me my name. “Okay, Kent, move down a lane to the left.” I moved down as directed. After a couple more laps, coach Stuart signaled me again and said, “Brad, move down another lane to the left.” I complied. By the time the warmup was over, my name was Norman, and I was standing in the wading pool.

But back in 1974 at North Hollywood Pool, I felt like I was channeling Olympic Gold Medalist Mark Spitz, and I was positive that I caught the queen’s eye once or twice as I swam by her elevated throne.

On the opposite side of the pool from the lifeguard chair were the two glorious springboards – one set at 1-meter, and the other set at 2-meters. These were our favorite activity to do at the pool. We got pretty good at doing jackknifes and swan dives (or so we thought), but big fat cannonball and cherry bomb splashes were our favorites. We mostly just goofed around doing boyish things like belly flops, lazy forward flips, mostly out-of-control back flips, and “Change-your-minds” where you acted like you were going to dive straight into the water but tucked into a cannonball at the last second.

On the last August day of the summer pool season – which was coincidentally also an extremely hot day – a Speedo wearing whale of a man swam right into the diving lane impact zone as I launched myself off of the springboard. I was in midair when I heard the whistle blow, but I didn’t see him until it was too late because I was looking across the pool to the Lifeguard Queen of all my dreams who was blowing said whistle. I collided with him upon entry of my almost perfect starfish belly flop, the impact of which knocked the wind out of me. I involuntarily inhaled a lungful of water which burned my lungs like fire. I began gasping uncontrollably for air under the surface of the water as I started sinking. The last thing I remembered was hearing a muffled splash next to me as I was looking up at the blazing, shimmering sun through the rippled surface of the water.

When I came back to my senses, there she was, smelling like Coppertone coconut tanning oil, leaning over me with the bleach scented chlorinated pool water dripping off of her face and hair and red swimsuit, giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the warm concrete pool deck. Her lips tasted like cherry flavored ChapStick. She was even more beautiful close up. Was I in heaven? I looked into her stunning hazel eyes and smiled. She pulled back and asked, “Kent, are you okay?” She knew my name! THE LIFEGUARD QUEEN KNEW MY NAME! Wait! How did she know my name? What happened? Never mind – let it happen! I started to say, “I love you, Lifeguard Queen!” but before I could say anything, I was rudely awakened by a big splash of pool water. Alas, it was all just a very vivid dream, probably intensified by the heat, hunger, and dehydration. But it seemed so real.

On the way out through the pool house that day she was working the front counter. We made eye contact, and I bashfully looked away. She said, “Cool Tee-shirt!” I was wearing a classic white Coca-Cola Tee-shirt with the red arm and neck ringer bands. I blushed. Then she said, “Have a nice day – see you next summer.” My heart skipped a beat. In an awkward, broken voice, I barely got, “See you next summer,” out of my mouth. At that age, “next summer” always seemed such a long way off and it would never come soon enough.

Summer, 1975, North Hollywood, Calif. This year we had secondhand BMX bicycles that we pieced together to get to the pool faster! On opening day, we raced each other down the railroad tracks from the apartment to the pool. All along the way we kept trying to one-up each other to see who could bunny-hop the highest or ride a wheelie the longest – this turned into a serious competition! Breathless, we locked our bikes to the rack at the pool and rushed to the front counter to get our tickets. The three of us; Scott, Chris, and myself, breathing heavily and dripping with sweat, didn’t even register with the attendant who just smiled at us as he took our quarters and handed us our tickets.

The singular thing that was occupying my mind was the Lifeguard Queen.

This time, the cold shower before entering the pool area was appreciated after riding our bikes so hard in the summer heat. We speed-walked toward our regular corner when we heard “Slow down!” coming over the staticky public address system, clearly directed at the three of us. We complied and slowed down – barely. As we briskly walked behind the queens throne I glanced up to get a brief look of her highness without being too obvious, but this time, the occupant of the throne was not the queen, instead, there was an imposter in her place: the throne was being occupied by one of the male lifeguards. Noooo! Where in the world was my Lifeguard Queen? Wahhhh! Sadly, I never saw her again. The pool days were never the same afterward. I felt an emptiness in her absence and became less enthusiastic about going to the pool.

Although I didn’t learn what her real name was, I imagined that it was something regal like Elizabeth, Genevieve, Catherine, or Margaret.

The summertime always reminds me of those carefree days at that pool with my brother and cousin, but mostly, I wonder about the Lifeguard Queen.

Old crushes die hard.

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

Beef Enchiladas

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Although my mom was not a Latina, she made killer 6-ingredient beef enchiladas on a tight budget. Slow braised chuck roast with onions, tortillas, lard, Las Palmas red enchilada sauce (“A must!”), and cheddar cheese. The secret ingredient was love.

Ride or Die / Wheels of Life

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Story 35 of 52

By M. Snarky

We wake at dawn,
often begrudgingly,
and load up the bikes,
and the necessary gear,
and drive the road,
barely awake,
to the edge of land,
to the edge of the sea,
where the two collide,
is where we congregate,
to set out,
on our weekly ritual.

We ride, we ride.

With skinny tires,
and spoke and wheel,
and chain and gears,
we hop on our saddles,
and grab our handlebars,
and we ride the weathered,
asphalt ribbon,
that strings along the,
Pacific Ocean,
and crisscrosses,
the coastal mountains,
that are dotted with,
century old oak trees,
that are covered with lichen,
and black walnut trees,
with resident squirrels,
and holes in the ground,
with other resident squirrels,
that often scurry,
frantically,
without apparent reason,
out across the road,
directly in front of us,
making us flinch,
and miraculously,
with nowhere to hide,
they somehow avoid getting run over,
at the very last second.

We ride, we ride.

With hawks, crows, and condors,
soaring overhead,
and sometimes,
a turkey buzzard or three,
on the road ahead,
dining a creature,
that was formerly living,
this is what they do,
we also spy mule deer,
and an occasional coyote,
out in the periphery,
of the living canvas,
and we see,
the tumbleweeds,
waiting for the wind,
to set them free,
and we see the purple sage,
and the green wild fennel,
an invasive species,
that is hard to eradicate,
and the orange poppies,
and the purple lupine,
and the yellow coreopsis,
the rainbow of colors,
and the richness of textures,
is pleasant to the eyes,
as we roll by,
side by side,
and keenly observe.

We ride, we ride.

Looking out across,
the shimmering azure sea,
changing hues by the moment,
we see the dark kelp beds,
just beneath the surface,
that protect the little fishes,
from the big fishes,
who want to eat them,
and we see sailboats,
and fishing boats,
and we see whales,
and dolphins,
and sea lions,
surfing and playing,
in the briny blue,
and they smile at us,
and we smile back,
acknowledging each other,
in the fleeting moment,
as we glide down the road.

We ride, we ride.

We ride in the fresh salt air,
and in the warm sunshine,
and in the biting cold,
and in the pouring rain,
and in the gusty wind,
that nobody really likes,
and we fix flat tires,
regardless of weather conditions,
because we must,
and we talk and laugh,
about all sorts of things,
sometimes serious,
sometimes humorous,
but always engaging,
and sometimes we cuss,
to emphasize a point,
and sometimes we deride,
the ones that are deserving,
of our scorn.

We ride, we ride.

We ride along,
through the open space,
between heaven and earth,
past the verdant fields,
and up and over the hills,
and across the valleys,
and through the mountain passes,
and down the canyons,
sometimes too fast,
and through the tunnels,
and over and under the bridges,
and sometimes through water,
that’s a little too deep,
that gets your shoes and feet wet,
making them cold and squishy,
and year after year,
we meet and we ride,
for endless miles,
with the people that we love.

We ride, we ride.

This is how we meditate,
and naturally medicate,
and how we heal,
and how we make sense of,
our complicated lives,
until the fateful day comes,
when circumstances conspire,
to weaken and wither our bodies,
and we can ride no more,
then we’ll dream,
the wonderful dream,
the golden dream,
the infinite dream,
of the adventures past,
and the stories told,
and the laughter,
and the comradery,
where time stands perfectly still.

And we ride, we ride,
endlessly.

More DOGE Please

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Story 24 of 52

By M. Snarky

I’m an unabashed Libertarian and have bones to pick with both the Democrats and the Republicans for all sorts of anti-freedom and anti-liberty policies. See my Politically Homeless post for some background on this.

Unless you have been living under a rock or are perhaps in solitary confinement in a foreign prison somewhere outside of the United States, you’ve heard of DOGE: The Department of Government Efficiency, which I’ll summarize thusly:

  • DOGE was created by an executive order from Donald Trump, a polarizing figure.
  • DOGE is managed by Elon Musk, a controversial super-genius level billionaire.
  • DOGE is acting as a consultancy to the Trump administration.
  • DOGE is reviled by many pundits, politicos, and media types.

Meme coin and Shiba Inu references aside, DOGE has become a lightning rod of controversy right out of the gate. Elon Musk is notable for his pragmatic approach to solving problems and distilling them down to their essential components, and stripping away any unnecessary elements. He’s very good at it. So, why not take this same practical approach to government spending to uncover any potential corruption, wasteful spending, fraud, overspending, ineptitude, redundancy, etc.? So what if he’s an outsider without any political experience? DOGE is about efficiency, not glad-handing or bashing the opposing political party and their policies and supporters at every opportunity.

Granted, Musk’s approach may seem as if the tool of choice is a machete instead of a scalpel, but I would argue that there is room for both and maybe a chainsaw too. For example, maybe use a scalpel for entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare, and the Department of Defense, but use a machete (or a chainsaw!) for everything else.

Have you ever looked at how many US government programs and agencies that there are? According to usa.gov, which, inconveniently, does not summarize how many there are on the landing page, so you have to count through them manually from A-Z, there are approximately 607 of them. SIX HUNDRED AND SEVEN! I’m no expert here, but that seems like a lot and is probably too many. Do we really need the National Gallery of Art whose statement is, “The National Gallery of Art collects, preserves and exhibits art works, and works to promote the understanding of art through research and educational programs.” Seems like museums, universities, or the private sector can handle that, you know, the super wealthy people that collect and sell art. Or perhaps Sotheby’s.

How about the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), whose statement is, “The United States Fire Administration (USFA), part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, works to prepare for, prevent, respond to all hazards.” Respond to all hazards seems like a stretch. Do we actually need federal fire fighters? I’m thinking absolutely not because firefighting is a very local state, county, and city service, some of which are voluntary, and so the feds should not be involved at all unless they want to donate a firetruck.

For the sake of argument, out of those 607 federal departments and agencies that spend nearly $7 trillion tax dollars per year, can’t we all agree that they should at least be audited like what Deloitte or PricewaterhouseCoopers do for Fortune 500 companies to ensure that the books are on the up and up and nothing fishy is going on? Oh, that’s right, best practice accounting is anathema to government. But it does seem that Mr. Musk is highly likely to find all kinds of efficiencies to be had across the board. But maybe the politicians really don’t care about efficiency at all and categorically do not want him to be checking the books or poking around for fraud, corruption, and waste (the evil trinity of the federal government) because the truth might slip out. Truth like the American taxpayers have been fooled into trusting the politicians with their hard-earned money, and the politicians have known about the fraud, corruption, and waste the entire time. “Nothing to see here!” Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

My intuition tells me that the nervous pants-on-fire politicians who aren’t positive that they’ll survive the scrutiny of an audit and their big media sycophants will portray Musk as evil and will stonewall him at every turn and clog up the judicial system with lawsuits challenging everything that Musk wants to do which will grind DOGE to a halt. Unfortunately, it’s all part of the dog-eared political playbook.

If the collective belief of the American taxpayer is that we’re all getting ripped off by the government all of the time and at all levels and it is absolutely corrupt (which should be the default attitude anyway), and the government provides sub-par services to the people they, ah, serve, doesn’t the government have the obligation to prove otherwise in the spirit of transparency? Well, I think so…but they won’t do it voluntarily, so someone needs to force their hand. That’s why we need DOGE.

I also want to see DOGE applied to the state, county, and city government levels too. I’m pretty sure taxpayers are getting ripped off left-and-right there too, especially here in Los Angeles where city hall is a cesspool of corruption and contempt.

I’m going to take the opportunity here to float out my six-step idea called FERRET:

Freeze the program budget.

Examine the program from the top down.

Reform the program.

Restrain the program.

Eject and prosecute anyone that is guilty of corruption or fraud.  

Transparency across the board in perpetuity.

I say we FERRET governments everywhere all of the time.

I also strongly recommend that we put governments on the blockchain so anyone can see all of the transactions at any time. Yeah, I know – wishful thinking – but it would be the closest thing to a truth machine that we can get without it being science fiction.

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2025. All rights reserved.

Politically Homeless

~ msnarky ~ 1 Comment
Still standing.

Story 12 of 52

By M. Snarky

That divisive 2024 presidential election cycle was pretty wild, wasn’t it? We went from old man Biden falling behind old man Trump in the polls to younger woman Harris surging past Trump in the polls. Some polls showed Harris ahead in this state and Trump ahead in that state and vice-versa. Women favored Harris and men favored Trump. Duh. Projections from the pundits, pollsters, politicos, and pinheads were for a tight election – not chad checking tight like in the 2000 presidential election, but tight, nonetheless. When the dust settled, we got ourselves another old white man, but also a misogynist, a womanizer, and a convict. Good job, America – you just elected the first Convict-in-Chief.

Was this a “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” vote? Perhaps it was, but we can do so much better than this.

Again, as a solid Libertarian (I voted for Chase Oliver and I encourage you to read about him), I find myself politically homeless. Being a social liberal and fiscal conservative makes me an outlier in today’s corrosive Team Red or Team Blue political duopoly.

Also, there is a misrepresentation of libertarians in that all we want to do is legalize drugs and prostitution. This is the bastardized version of the libertarian party. The libertarian party is about much more than decriminalization of drug use and sex workers. It’s also about personal freedom, minimizing government force and government interference in your life, free markets, sound money policy, etc. I recommend that you read all about it over at lp.org before making any judgment.

The best definition of liberty I ever heard was from Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in-chief of Reason, the magazine of “free minds and free markets,” which, to paraphrase, was, “Liberty is the total absence of government coercion.” Yes!

I was a double-hater from the beginning for many reasons. Neither candidate had a coherent foreign, domestic, trade, or monetary policy. Both Harris and Trump were floating out off-the-cuff ideas here and there (most of them terrible) I think mostly to see what might stick in the news-cycle, but there was zero substance in my opinion. No tax on tips was the best idea they could agree on. Wow. Talk about weak sauce. Instead, how an adult conversation about a simple flat minimum tax rate coupled with a value added tax (VAT) plan like what 175 other countries do? Just floating out an idea here. Also, we don’t need a new Department of the Politically Homeless, thank you.

Neither candidate spoke about reigning in the size and scope and power of the government. It was essentially more of the same – more spending, more government jobs programs, more debt. So much debt that tens of trillions of dollars of it doesn’t even move the needle anymore. I think this is because most people just don’t understand that one trillion dollars has twelve zeros (for a visual reference, that is $1,000,000,000,000) and is too big of a number for the average person to comprehend let alone talk about.

No talk about federal government program reform, or departmental or agency audits, like maybe audit the Federal Reserve, Department of Education, Postal Service, Social Security, Medicare, IRS, ad infinitum. Do we really need the Commission of Fine Arts? Probably not. No talk about shrinking the military budget or de-tangling our very messy foreign entanglements. Balancing the budget? Forget about it! Sorry, Senator Rand Paul: Your Six Penny Plan to balance the federal budget in 5-years is a great idea but is also a non-starter because Congress is addicted to pork. What we need here is an intervention.

It has been said that a government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have, which is something that we are flirting with. This is why further expansion of any existing or creation of any new government program or “service” needs to be curtailed by any means possible, including some old school filibustering.

Also, the voting bloc of unionized government workers is probably going to vote for the candidate that is not talking about reform or cuts, because reform or cuts may cost them their jobs, so there’s that. Essentially, they vote for job security.

Oddly, neither candidate talked about the ever-increasing tax burden placed on the shoulders of the American people because of the federal government’s spending problem. Instead, Harris supports an unrealized gains tax and Trump supports massive tariffs, both of which are unbelievably bad ideas and would increase the tax burden and the cost of goods for Americans across the board, not just the millionaires and billionaires.

To drive this idea home, I’ll flip the script from talking about income to talking about tax burdens. For example, “I make $100,000 per year,” changes to, “My tax burden is $24,000 per year,” which is an entirely different conversation. This is only a 24% tax rate on gross earnings example, so it’s not a crazy high number that I’m hypothesizing with here. Work with me. In some places in the world, that $24K is a fortune.

Can I get a show of hands from people who like having $2,000 a month stolen from them? Oops! What I meant was, can I get a show of hands from people that like making a “voluntary” $2,000 per month contribution to the IRS? Oh, and if you don’t voluntarily give up your money to the government, it will be taken by force. That force being the confiscation of your cash and assets and possible jail time.

Also, that pesky 6,871-page U.S. tax code (75,000 pages after tax regulations and official tax guidelines from the IRS are included) is just too unwieldy for casual political conversation. Let’s be honest here; the U.S. tax code is a bloated tome of the greatest cradle to grave taxation scheme ever imposed upon the public. I say we burn it and start over with a single page tax return.

The only more that I want from the government is more freedom, more personal liberty, more reform, and more contraction. Anything less is anathema to a free society.

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024. All rights reserved.

Supporting Links

A-Z index of U.S. government departments and agencies: https://www.usa.gov/agency-index

Chase Oliver: https://votechaseoliver.com/

Libertarian Platform: https://www.lp.org/platform/

Reason Magazine: https://reason.com/

Senator Rand Paul Six Penny Plan: https://www.paul.senate.gov/dr-rand-paul-introduces-six-penny-plan-to-balance-the-federal-budget-in-five-years/

Tax code, regulations and official guidance: https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/tax-code-regulations-and-official-guidance

Value-Added Tax (VAT): https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueaddedtax.asp