Four Dollars a Minute...

Four dollars a minute... that is the drunkard's math in figuring out his cost/her gross revenue for paying for the attention of an exotic dancer. At 20 bucks for a 5 minute trouser grind, the cost-benefit analysis is not dificult to understand. (Ironically, her business model is the same as mine. At a billing rate of 4 dollars a minute, and assuming that she generated equivalent funds for an hour shift, she and I both generate nearly half a million in gross revenue every year for our respective employer [and, yes I realize she is more likely an independent contractor but that is unduly complicated, but she can deduct her slutty clothes as a business expense and I get health and retirement so it is a fair trade-off], yet we both receive as compensation about one dollar an hour).

What is difficult to understand is why we don't apply the drunkard's math to more important matters. At the age of 35, between the MS, stress, family history of diabetes and heart disease, my undying love for wreckless and uncontrollable driving fueled by a motorcycle and now the Chevy Vega stationwagon with a 350 small block shoved in the engine compartment like a quarterback with his hand in the homecoming queen's skirt, it is likely that even with medical advances (and assuming that our eventual Chinese overlords do not mandate euthanasia at retirment age), it is safe to say I can make it to the age of 70.

On most days, by the time I get home, eat, change clothes, chase those damn kids off my lawn and lock away the mental abuses from the daily interraction with butt-nuggets at work (and assuming it isnt a head-fixing night, a Girl Scouts night, or a scheduled in-home demonstration of organic insect based slabs of meat in order to get the free chest freezer with the built in waffle maker and snowcone machine) it is generally 8 pm before I get to time that really feels like my time. Kids go to bed at 8:30, and at 10:00 I am horizontal as well. I stopped working weekends when I accepted that I am ordained to always be a worker bee, never a queen. So, that means each week I roughly have 2040 minutes of "my" time within which to live a life. That is 53040 minutes a year. Assuming no significant life style changes, that leaves 1,856,400 minutes left before our future Chinese overlords organically compress my remains into heating oil. At just over a dollar an hour, (and not adjusting for wage increases, unemployment, divorce, scandal, incapacity, inflation or rabies) that means the remainder of "my life" has a value of just about $2,000,000.

It ain't money in the bank, and it is not a comment on any particular intrinsic individual value. It is a line of credit that the universe has extended to me, accepted at millions of retailers world-wide. I can spend my dollar a minute credit with my kids, ignoring my kids, or looking for new and creative ways to write off my children an business expenses. At the bargain rate of a dollar a minute, I can find stupid reasons to be angry at my wife, or I can enrich her life and allow her to enrich mine, all for 2 dollars a day.

Two weeks ago, I got to see Child #1 and Child #2 for about 20 minutes. We talked, laughed, exchanged some gifts, acted almost like a normal modern family. It was damned sure worth more than a dollar a minute.

This one I been holding on to for a while. Two weeks ago, a rookie cop stopped to help a young woman on the highway change a flat tire. While in his patrol car, a 20 year old penis with legs who had been drinking too much slammed his car into Dwayne Freeto's patrol car at 84 miles per hour. Freeto was trapped inside, and burned to death. Officer Freeto was 34 years old, had a wife. Had two children. His family has shown incredible restraint in the wake of this senseless loss, so I have been waiting for my own anger to subside. A year later, I still have an unresolved anger about the shooting of Hank Nava, who also left behind a wife and offspring. Freeto didn't get to max-out his credit card of life. His time was inherently worth a helluva lot more than that of the most of the rest of us. Men and women like Officer Freeto and Officer Nava stand between us and the drunken walking penises so that we can safely arrive home and play with our children, whom they were protecting at school and on the bus ride home. Four dollars a minute doesn't even begin to cover the things that police and firefighters do for us. (The walking penis survived the crash. I pray that his case goes to trial. Next week I am going to renew my voter's registration, just on the off-chance I can get on his jury panel. Gonna save him a seat on my party-bus to Hell).

Today, my wife took the second of three strikes that could lead to a diagnosis of cervical cancer. Dollar a minute, dollar a second, whatever. I will pay it as long as I can get it. There is no dollar equivalent for the time we share together.

Come one, come all. Your hot spot for male entertainment. We take all major credit cards, and have 28 ATM's on site! This week only guys, for your visual pleasure, coming to the center stage (cue the techno umptiss-umptiss dance music) the lovely, the talented... Formerly Living.