Street Nonsense

Yesterday, as I am wont to do from time to time, I purchased a copy of Street Sense (the DC Homeless newspaper if you don't already know) from Charles Nelson, my friendly Metro Center vendor. Amazingly, this was the first copy of the current issue that I had purchased. Well, maybe it's not that amazing since I was in Japan for two weeks. I meant to buy one last week, but all I had was a twenty. I meant to give him the twenty but I wussed out. Money, she's really got a hold on me dang it.

Anyway, one of the feature articles in this edition has to be one of the stupidest things I have ever read. The whole thing is one big long lament about the puny salaries of local homeless non-profit's CEOs. In the article they provided a list of local NPs, their budgets and their CEOs' salaries. It is ridiculous. Some of the CEOs have salaries that take up more than 30% of the total budget! On average their salary takes up nearly 5%. This is outrageous. All I ever hear about are the "exorbitant" salaries paid to the heads of big corporations. I never hear about how non-profit CEOs are fleecing the public. Let's just look at some numbers here.



Just look at that. It boggles the mind! Non-profit CEOs get paid, on average, more than 100 times the amount that CEOs of big companies (I used the top 28 from the Fortune 500) relative to the organizations' budgets. How is that fair? Okay, we're just looking at averages, that's true. Let's look at the medians then. For nonprofits, the median salary as a percentage of organizational budget is 7.5%, that's MORE than the average. For major corp. the median is 0.0162%, LESS than the average. Now are you happy? We looked at median, and it just got worse! Okay, I will grant you that there is one non-profit that pays the CEO $0.00. There is also one that pays the CEO $39,000 on a budget of $121,000; that's more than 30%. Sickening. The most that ANY CEO of a major corporation gets paid, as a percent of revenue, is 0.18% (Valero Energy). And that takes into account all the long term benefits. If we just looked at salary it would be much much lower.


Just for the heck of it, Let's throw out most of the Fortune 28's revenue. Let's only look at salaries vs. profit. Check out the chart.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. As a percent of profits, the CEOs of nonprofits get paid INFINITY PERCENT! That is so incomprehensible, that, well, I can't comprehend it. INFINITY PERCENT! Even the major corporations only pay, on average, about 0.7%.

So all of you out there complaining that Oil Co. CEOs get paid to much and what not. Change your target. It is the non-profit CEOs that are getting paid at levels that are completely out of whack.

Stupid non-profits.

Yes we've got no money!

Here's a good memory for you all!

Once, right after I got married and we added Maggie to my account, making a joint checking account, I said to myself, "well, no sense keeping these old checks with only my name on them around. I might as well throw them out!"

Little did I know that we had a dumpster-diving vitamin fiend living in our neighborhood. On second thought, looking at where we lived at the time (in The Hyatt apartment building on the corner of 47th Ave NE and NE 15th St in Seattle) the existence of such a person shouldn't have surprised me. Also, little did I know that I was such an unstoppable moron that I would throw away perfectly good checks without tearing them up. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

Anyway, cut to a couple weeks later (financial aid day!! WOOHOO!!!!!) when we go to the bank to deposit some money. "Hmm.." I think while I look at the balance, "I don't always keep exact track of how much money we have, but it should be.....well, quite a bit more than this.... So we get home and call the bank and they tell us of all these mystery checks for random amounts that have check numbers not listed in our checkbook register. "Oh crap!" I thought, "My second-worst fear has come true! Someone stole our checks and is out there pretending to be me!" (For your information, my worst fear is falling out of bed into some kind of weird space-time vortex or bottomless pit or something)

So we went to the bank and filled out all kinds of paperwork to get the fraud fixed. The woman who helped us at the Roosevelt Ave Washington Mutual was very helpful (thanks, whoever you were!) The only problem was that we had to wait, like, 20 business days to get our money back. So, we basically ate no food and bought no stuff for awhile. We tried to heat our apartment by lighting copious amounts of candles. It was pretty cool, really. Then, one day, we went back to the Yak to visit family and we totally scored a whole bunch of food from our parents because they felt really bad for us. HAH! Suckers, little did they know, but we actually got all our money back two days before we raided their kitchens! Oh man, they totally got OWNED! (To all of you who think that using OWNED or one of the typoed variations of it is really cool, let me tell you this: There is a big difference between cool and stupid that is immediately obvious to everyone. Except for you, apparently.)

Oh yeah? Well Emerge from this!

First off, let me say that I really love my church. And please don't be offended.

I think the "Emergent" movement is dumb. For all it's talk about a new "conversation" that is honest and doesn't have the baggage of a built-vocabulary like the "institutional Church," I don't think it's that much different. There absolutely is a set of buzzwords that you need to know, and the buzzwords, at least to me, appear to be synonyms of the horrible, soul-crushing buzzwords that "Fundamentalists(!)" use. But not the same words mind you. The emergent church can't use the same semantics as those they are emerging from, right?

I guess the most frustrating thing about it for me is that, while I agree with many of the things the movement says, I don't want to be a part of no movement. I want to be a part of a church that does things however it wants! I don't care if other emergent churches do things a certain way and go to certain conferences and read certain books. Once we all start doing that, we're nothing but another denomination that'll soon have mega-churches of its own. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just seems that so often we are blind to our own ambitions, our own destiny. Without thinking independently, we'll all become that which we rail against. It's happened time and time again, both within the church and without. So 20 years down the road, don't say I didn't warn the movement.

And here's another thing. Can we drop the criticism of other churches already? Yes, I already know that we do things differently. Please stop reminding me of how stupid other churches are for the way they do things. Stop defining yourselves by what you are not, and start worrying about what you are! I'm not saying we shouldn't look around us, but there is a HUGE difference between saying, "eh, that's not really for me, but if it works for you..." which is what I thought the emergent thingy was all about and saying "what you are doing is different from my church in the following ways and this is why it is stupid and wrong and if I had enough guts I'd say you were going to hell, but that's what a IFB would say so I can't say it but I really think it."

Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places (i.e. Ginkworld and The Ooze). As an example of what I mean, read this article by Frank
Viola (imagine my disappointment when I realized he was not the same Frank Viola that led the Minnesota Twins to the World Series in 1987.) He's trying to be evenhanded, but the whole article is predicated on the fact that we all know how stupid this other person's church is. Grrrrrrr!

Maybe y'all can educate me on how "emergent" is any different in essentials from any other denomination. I already know we do things differently, but are we any less elitist? Do you have a good book I can read? If you tell me to read any more articles or anything else by John O'Keefe, I'll just pretend like I didn't hear you.

Passing Around the Collection Plate

Hey! I just thought of something that I've never complained about OR called stupid since I started writing this blog: collecting things!

If you collect something, particularly unopened toys, now would be a good time to stop reading. Also, if you think I am cool and have been defending me as such to your friends, this would be an excellent place for you to stop reading.

Come on people! What a waste of money! Who are you going to impress by having a complete collection of the new Star Wars toys unopened? I used to have some, but I've since opened them all to play with. I mean, for the brickson to play with, yeah, that's it. I used to be a total dork, but I have since seen the light! It is a stupid thing to do. They will never be worth anything. They are not an investment. Stocks are an investment. Real estate is and investment. Mass produced toys in their original packaging are NOT an investment. Especially since there's about a million other people doing the exact same thing. Y'all can just spend the next 40 years ripping each other off, okay?

This seems like a good place to put in the disclaimer that this post refers to and mocks only those collectors that are over age 18. Collecting things should be a strictly childish pastime.

Here is my list of things that people collect and brief descriptions of how I feel on the subject:

New Action Figure/Collectible Toys: stupid and dorky

Old school Action Figures: Just dorky.

Shot Glasses: Unless you're an alcoholic, pointless.

Decorative Spoons: Why?

Baseball Cards: Retro Chic.

Card-based Role Playing Game Cards: Monumentally nerdy. That means you Magic: The Gathering.

Stamps: meh...

Scabs: Really, really gross. *shudder*

Midgets: Illegal, probably.

Diamonds: Supporter of death and destruction in Africa, you evil, evil person.

They Might Be Giants Albums: Totally and completely awesome!

There you go. Now how do you collectors feel? You got pwn3d! Maaaaaaan, I hate the internet and it's attendant base "language." Wait, I'm sorry internet, I love you, I really do! Don't go! Please!