Syndicate and Hague

Stop sending me special offers.  Stop sending me those damned “checks” to use.  Just stop it.

I just spent 45 minutes ripping up your mail - and why did I have to be so careful?  Because you, Citibank, have to put my full name and address in about 10 different places in the mailings.  Because you, Capital One, insist on sending me checks that some random person could just write up and charge the hell out of my account.  Because every time I buy a shredder it breaks within a month and so I’ve given up and taken to tearing up the bits of paper with my hands because, despite the fears over identity theft online, it’s your own recycling/garbage that poses the biggest danger.

Every week, I get five (or so) new offers for cards or “special” offers from my current company offering me the opportunity to spend money I don’t have on impulsive crap I don’t need.

I hate you.  You are exploitative and predatory and suck in the needy and greedy, preying on people’s desires and desperation.  You are plunderers, pushing consumption as the norm and portraying yourselves as our security nets when we’re in need.  Of course, anyone who carries a balance with you could see the ground shift beneath their feet in a moment if you decide to arbitrarily increase rates or change fees or alter minimum payments.

Your leaders make out like the bandits they are - even when your companies fail, they land safely in their multimillion dollar Central Park apartments with their golden parachutes.  They make more from their failures than most of us will accumulate in our entire lifetimes.

Stop sending me mail.  Stop trying to convince me that impulsive/compulsive buying is acceptable.  You can try to blame individuals for making bad decisions and getting into trouble, but the fact is that you and the legislators who allow you to ravage all of us have created the culture in which you are a solution for our crises; orchestrated the financial collapse that hasn’t affected you at all; and systematized your consolidation of power - of rate adjustments and fees and whatnot - while we have nothing.

You totally and completely suck.

Also, I will never carry a balance with you.  Never.

Also, also: stop sending me mail.

Ah, for my first real post on this new blog…how about a dash of social outrage?

I should say that I make a real effort to make sure that what I post is real–there have actually been stories I’ve passed on because I couldn’t find enough information to vent in public. So when I saw the commercial at the bottom of this post, I had to check it out.

And…yup…it’s a real thing. The Barbie Fashion Fever Shopping Boutique.

I remember from my teen years the brouhaha over the “Math is Hard” Barbie (speaking of Barbie history, there is an entire site devoted to Barbie history and I don’t know why this surprises me tonight. I think I’m a bit off my game.) Anyway, so I remember that and it’s utterly repugnant to reinforce this ditzy, useless version of femininity that Barbie has come to represent. Even though sometimes she’s a very sassily-dressed business lady. Sigh.

But, whatever, Barbie girls love shopping yadda yadda — it’s old news at this point.

Diabolical, to me, is the credit card that never runs out of money. It’s a terrible message to allow girls (or boys) to be instilled with. And shameless. Really, Mattel? What possible purpose would it serve to give children a fake cash register for their fake people to charge things to their fake credit cards which operate as free money? Okay, call me paranoid, but I do think there’s an argument to be made that they’re training the kids to be loose with money.

Anyway, after that long spiel, take a look at the video…