Day 122--- Find Your Own Salvation...

First of all I just want to have a round of applause for anyone who had anything to do with the show "Dexter", I don't care if you have never seen the show, you are reading my blog so I suggest you do as I say... Seriously though, last night just capped off season 4 with another extremely thrilling finale... Honestly though I am so obsessed with the show the finale could have sucked balls and I still would have loved it... If you have never seen the show, I suggest you find it wherever you can and buy it... I could go into hours of detail trying to sell you on it, but I say just watch one or 2 episodes and you will be sold yourself.

Now that my little Dexter plug is done with we can move on with today's topic... Since I was at the mall all day, getting into the Christmas spirit I have decided that today's blog is going to be mainly nice. At least that is the plan as of right now, we will see how it turns out... The group that I have chosen to write about is are the lovely Salvation Army Bell Ringers...

Now, besides the obvious annoyance/public disturbance that they create I believe that these people are doing a fairly good deed... Now, I have not researched at any great length to find out if they are paid, or volunteer, or what sort of screening process they have to go through, but as far as I am concerned, bravo. Now, I would imagine these people must be volunteers because I doubt their little buckets are making more than minimum wage in these hard economic times... And it doesn't seem to make much sense to pay people more than they are making... Unless they are taking a page out of the U.S. Governments cash flow model... So for the sake of this blog they are full on volunteers. Now, this makes them either some of the nicest or some of the dumbest people on the planet. I walked out of the mall today into an 18 degree, snowy, windy Wisconsin night and there smiling at my side was a 50-65 year old man ringin that bell like it was going out of style... Not only was he ringin it like his life depended on it but he was basically smiling ear to ear... Granted at this point the smile was probably frozen there, but still, if this was my job I'd be flipping people off and spitting at them left and right with the biggest scowl you've ever seen... Its not that I don't like helping out, but I think my bell ringing skills are worth a tid bit more than the $3.75 in change that people will be throwing in during an average hour...

Where do they find the people who are excited about doing this? Certainly not near any music schools. I wish they would at least screen for people with some sense of rhythm and tempo. Heck I may even put in a whole dollar sometime if I feel the slightest bit entertained... Honestly even if they looked like they were attempting a song I could throw in a greenback. I wonder if these people are forced to do this as some sort of community center punishment that we don't know about. During the summer they pick up trash and during the winter they are forced to dress up like Sanny Claus and ring a bell... This would actually make sense, while making me feel less safe at the same time. Actually they are probably just put there for the guilt factor, they are the human version of those Christian Children's Fund commercials. I can walk past an empty donation pail without batting an eye, but if some old man is out in the freezing cold jingling his bell I am a little more inclined to drop something in. The power of guilt is amazing isn't it?...

So, I think this is a decent stopping point for today... I don't think I was too mean and I think I made it obvious that I actually respect these guys, even though they are typically terrible bell-ers... I say next time you are passing one, even if you are not going to drop in some change, say hi... I cant imagine how boring and lonely they are standing out there, so I usually try and say at least a few words to let them know I sympathize... If you are feeling really good about life maybe even drop something in, you're not stupid you know it always feels better to give than to receive (Mutters Elton John)... Man I'm bossy...