french people piss me off

so everyone by now knows my job requires that i know a lot more than i ever wanted about retirement and pensions and things of that nature. even worse, i seem to get diarrhea of the mouth whenever anyone brings up pensions, retirement, unions or anything and i spew all of my knowledge onto friends, families, or any other unsuspecting victim in the vicinity. although i do try to control this, it is truly like diarrhea in that when it hits you, you just have to let go.

it is so bad that a few weeks ago andrew peacefully woke me up with some kisses on a saturday morning. instead of doing what most almost newlywed couples with no kids would do, we had a heated discussion about 401(k)s and pension plans for about an hour and a half. thus invigorated, we jumped out of bed ready to begin a long day of saving, which is boring in its very nature.

it is clear where i'm coming from. as a responsible, boring american i believe in saving for retirement when you are young, and consistently contributing throughout life. within these plans is the understanding that we'll probably not be able to retire until we're 70 years old (yes, that's depressing), because saving for retirement in america now-a-days comes with many risks to the individual and almost none to the company. one way to offset the risk is to invest in the market in the long term, and let compound interest do its job.

so when i hear about how the FRENCH are STRIKING and RIOTING because they might have to retire at age 62 instead of 60, it pisses me off. they are considering raising the retirement age by TWO years, which is still under the average US retirement by many years, because it costs their government tons of money to pay for the retirement of all of these frenchies. and to top it off, the average lifespan for the french is WAY higher than it is for americans, at 81.5 years! so not only do they go into retirement earlier, they live in retirement longer than us too!

ok, why is this pissing me off so much? i mean, i don't live in france and it really won't affect me (unless france really does go bankrupt, then it will affect everyone, remember a little country called greece?). it pisses me off b/c the french gov't is asking its people to take one for the team. please work two more years so that we don't go bankrupt as a country. please work two more years so we don't have to raise taxes for everyone just to cover your risk. but they refuse to be team players, and as is the way with the french, they decide that taking to the streets in angry revolution is a good solution to this problem.

which leads me to the next point, and that is that i hate all american politicians. it just feels like our politicians care more about appeasing special interest groups than actually doing what is right and good for the long term. where the eff is renewable energy? where is ss reform? why the eff are we in two wars? where the eff is osama bin laden? why are we talking about mosques? why does the gov't care who i marry? why are the craziest people i have ever seen in my life running for office and winning? why do comedy shows make more sense than our news stations? wtf? i often feel like banging my head against the wall whenever i crack open (metaphorically, everything's online now) the newspaper.

and lest you think i am a conservative in sheep's clothing, there is no way in h*ll i will vote for a republican in this election (sorry, andrew...). george bush was in office for eight years and didn't balance the budget ONCE in those eight years...[liberal rant about how bush sucked and ruined our country]. also, the tea party is i'm sure well intentioned, but come on, they are cray cray. the only solution to this craziness that is the world that i see is to join the whole world together in order to accomplish one thing: interstellar space travel. if that is our goal as a world, these other concerns will fade into the background. we won't need to worry about these things, we will rather worry about things like: can we create artificial intelligence that could potentially mimic a mother's relationship to a child enough to raise babies in space using androids? can we come up with a fuel source strong enough to approach even a fraction of light speed? how strong can we make telescopes? how can we use dark matter to travel through space? is it better to create intergenerational spaceships or try to come up with deep freeze technology?

those are the issues i care about. in the spirit of my rant, i will now replace the adjective "french" with "space" in my speech, and i encourage all supporters of my agenda to do the same.

space-fries. space-toast. space-bread. space-wine. space-cheese. mastering the art of space cooking by julia childs.