Crap, I am a have-not.

You will be assimilated.  I just wanted to get that non-sequitur out of the way so that I can get on with the complaining.

I have spent probably the last 24 hours feeling really indignant (also indigent.  But mostly indignant).  This culminated today when I read this article in the New York Times, which is about how hard it might be for executives in New York to adjust to the half-a-million-dollar per year salary cap that Obama has proposed for executives who work for companies receiving bailout money.  The things that I was bitter about prior to reading this article seem sort of like the salad I had before eating an overlarge meal of bad shellfish.  I AM FOOD-POISONED VOMITOUSLY BITTER ABOUT THIS.

I am probably bitter because my parents struggled to raise me and three brothers (not to mention the live-in houseguests) on a combined income of approximately one eighth of what these people make—and that was in a good year.  Private school?  Tutoring?  I will buy it.  If I could do it over again, I would want more quality elementary and secondary education (most of my teachers were great, but the system itself was kind of screwed up).  But fucking.  $16,000 for biannual vacations?  The only vacation I have ever been on was when my church job raised money for me to go with them to Paris so I could help with the low notes.  Chauffeurs?  Limos?  I can’t even afford a car because of my absurd student loan payments.  $35,000 for three formal gowns per year, not counting the cost of a plate at a charity dinner?  COME ON.  I can’t even buy a suit on clearance from Men’s Wearhouse, and my cat just ruined every single tie I have ever owned, 100% of which were purchased for less than $25 each, and most of which came from TJ Maxx.

I understand that image and appearances are important.  They are for any job (even mine: it is important for fourth-string opera singers to look pretty.  You can’t be fat and ugly unless you’re already wildly successful.).  But seriously, people.  The economy is crashing all around you, and once EVERYTHING ON THE PLANET CLOSES DUE TO LACK OF FUNDING, your children, as well as the children I may someday have, will probably be taught arithmetic by Harvard-educated bums living in cardboard boxes on the street corner, and they will have to look up “bank” in the dictionary.  So by all means, continue spending money on gun-carrying limo drivers and your summer home in the Hamptons.  Douchebags.  (Secretly I am bitter because I should have gone to business school.  No class on Fridays and ABSURD amounts of money.)

I promise to stop being indignant tomorrow.  I may even come back with more Star Trek references.