I Drink for a Reason by David Cross Read Free Book Online Page A

ten feet to the porch, and drinking themselves into a
     stupor while they daydream about all the unimaginative things they’d do if they won the lottery. (“I’d quit my job and move
     to the Haunted Mansion at DisneyWorld! Just make them build me an apartment there!” or “I’d get super fucked up and buy a
     bunch of cars and just shoot them!”) There’s a surprisingly large and extensive industry that caters to the super-duper rich.
    I saw on one of those “magazine” shows,
Dateline
or something, a titillating story about high-end luxury items, and I swear to you that I am not making this up. And I grant
     that a lot of the examples I use to illustrate a point I’m trying to make are logical but fabricated extensions of what I
     find absurd, but this is not one of them—this is true, I swear it. One of the items they showed was a 24-karat gold inlay
     for the soul of your foot that fits inside your shoe. What the motherfucking “f”?! Jesus, why not just have diamonds surgically
     implanted in your heart? Gold does serve a handful of useful purposes—it conducts electricity, doesn’t tarnish, is very easy
     to work with, it alloys with many other metals, it’s widely used in the aerospace and medical communities—but what purpose
     could it possibly be used for as an instep? You don’t even get to show it off, so there’s no real gratification in even that.
     I suppose you could take your shoe off at dinner and say, “I know you have to go up and accept your Pulitzer in a minute,
     but check this out!” As I am writing this I realize that there is the equivalent of the golden instep for every economic class
     out there. This next item isn’t exactly gratuitous luxury, but I would put this in the subset category of unnecessary items.
     I’ve seen this around a couple of times now. It’s called “the bumper badger,” and it’s a thin, corrugated piece of rubber
     that latches on to the inside of the trunk of your car. It hangs over the back of the exterior and protects the bumper—the
     bumper of your car, of course, being the thing that protects your car. The bumper is usually reinforced rubber or plastic
     and is designed to take the impact of a hit. So this thin piece of nothing is there to protect the bumper from scratches,
     I guess? So in order to keep the back of your car looking pretty you have to drape a goofy piece of rubber mat over it? Kinda
     defeats the purpose. So many things that are presented to us as “time savers” or just regular “thank god somebody finally
     figured out a better way!” type of items are wholly superfluous and not really needed.
    You can see it in the perpetually empty smile of the models performing mundane, everyday tasks in the ads throughout the Sharper
     Image or Sky Mall catalogs or in any given infomercial. Folding an easier to fold ladder, storing something under your bed
     with ease that up until now was not possible to store under your bed without fifteen seconds of focused imagination. The joy
     of finally cleaning your gutter without having to stand on something to elevate you. Making pancakes without all the muss
     and fuss that you used to endure with the new “30 Second Pancake Batter Thing!” How did the pioneers ever do without it!?
     Jesus, we are a lazy, gullible, mindlessly consumptive culture, aren’t we?

YourStar.com
    I DON’T GET IT . W ELL , I GET IT IN THE SENSE THAT I UNDERSTAND what it is. And I get why, given the intelligence and gullibility of Americans, it not only exists but also truly thrives
     as a business. But, come on, paying money to a suspiciously generic-sounding company called the Universal Star Council to
     have a star named after you or a loved one?! You’re kidding, right? You’re not? Go to www.yourstar.com , you say, and I’ll see what you’re talking about? Okay, fine! I will!
    The home page of yourstar.com features the sentence “As your star shines… your love will last. Eternal beauty, and