What a tangled web we Wove

 

I'm trying to grasp the mentality of being dropped into a war zone and having anywhere near your top 100 concerns getting a $10,000 engagement ring shipped to your girlfriend back in the states.  Like, how is this a priority?

It almost sounds like an SNL skit; if I found out that a fellow soldier deployed to Iraq was researching how to get a $10,000 engagement ring to his girlfriend, I wouldn't assume that he is looking to buy from some website.  I'd assume that some looting had gone on and he was trying to figure out how to get a valuable piece of contraband out of the country.

In any case, what the hell is wrong with just waiting till you get back to the States?  That ring isn't a contract, after all.  She can still dump your deployed ass while you are fighting for, um, your country.  She can turn that ring into a down payment for an Audi.  She can use it to pay for her boyfriend's bail bond.  All kinds of possibilities.

One more thing- I hear a lot of stuff about a woman's "dream ring."  If your dreams involve a piece of pretty rock that costs more than a year of my rent, well, I guess everyone has the right to dream.  But I have the right to call your dreams damn shallow.  And I will.

Lexus' gross "Through the Years" commercial*

 

I guess it's supposed to be "heartwarming" that "through the years," Lexus has never forgotten what's "important:"  Providing overpriced look-at-me mobiles for spoiled rotten rich suburbanites to make their perfect lives even more perfect at the very end of what was for many millions of people another rough year economically.

There are no recessions in December, or any other time, for customers of Christmas Lexuses (Lexi?)  There are no layoffs, no stock market crashes, no downsizing, and certainly no inflation stress.  The coming of cold weather and colored lights brings nothing less than the promise of another brand new Lexus to drive to the Million-dollar Old Family Homestead/Estate with your beautiful wife and beautiful children while dressed in your thousand-dollar winter outfits.  After parking the Lexus ostentatiously in front of the house, it's inside for an evening of congratulating each other being thankful for not being part of the 99 percent who has to worry about grubby things like keeping the lights on and if the SNAP benefits are going to be held up (again) in January.   And for being in a country with some of the lowest income tax rates in the civilized world, allowing the Very Best of Us to not only buy new cars but also stack piles of cash in hedge funds and trips to Disneyworld and brand-NEW outfits to wear to Grandpa's house because he and the siblings might recognize the cashmere coat from last year and that would be a real scandal. 

*equally gross is the comment section, which has to be bots or paid spokeswhores of Lexus.  I mean, come on.  These people can't be real.