Cardaphobia

This week I got an early birthday present, in the form of yet another card I don't need, from a gas station I tend to stop at early in the morning to get my prerequisite soda and healthy breakfast snack (usually it's one of the two green sodas, Mello Yello or Mountain Dew, and a packet of Lance crackers. Coronary at 33 sounds likely). I took it not to be rude and say "no, my wallet is full of useless discount cards already!" But my wallet is in fact full of useless cards already.

When did discount cards become the new thing to unload on regular patrons at a business? If the discounts actually saved you money right then and there (as opposed to "racking up points in the near-future, after the Great Dragon Apocalypse of 2017 has rendered life above ground perilous for humanity and thus you really don't need to drive to work today"), it would be okay. And yes, the few cents I save with some cards does make me feel better about being such a cheap, cheap bastard.

Sometime while I was busy reading Gravity's Rainbow for fun, extreme couponing became all the rage, and not just with seniors who are afraid that a black man in a white house will take away all their pills (or have a robot attack them, for my fellow Classic SNL fans out there). Saving money is the new spending money, but extreme. If anyone needs to save money, it has two thumbs and is this guy. But still, when I need a card to save a penny on some Bandaids at CVS, something is wrong with America.

My Best Buy credit card died a while back because I didn't use it much, and now they've sent me a new one, extending my credit. For what purpose other than to engorge me on flatscreen TVs and 3-D DVD players, I know not; my relationship with technology is a bit like Andy Rooney's was with eyebrow trimmers. But the card is active, and there are all those One Direction CDs coming along...plus the DVD/t-shirt combo for "Best of Kenny Loggins: Live at Red Rocks." I mean, c'mon...it's Kenny Goddam Motherfucking Loggins, for Christ's sake.

My debit card is about the only piece of plastic that always comes through in a pinch, though sometimes that pinch becomes a bite on my rear end. Plastic cards will be the death of America, I say, a plot by the Illuminati, the Nazis, the Chinese, the Better Business Bureau, the GOP, the FBI, the CIA, and AARP working together to rob us blind.

Perhaps I've been sipping too much Go-Go Juice...