Rappers
are giving financial advice
"'How To
Survive In A Recession' With Slim Thug: 'Making It Rain? That's Stupid'" (MTV)
Rapper/boss/hustler
Slim Thug just added another slash to his handle: author. After boasting this
line: “Hard times got the whole United States stressin'/I'm
writin' a book, how to survive in a
recession” in his second verse on “I Run” from his second
solo opus, Boss of All Bosses, the towering MC decided to deliver on his
promise to teach the dos and don'ts to those trying to “stack
bread” and those just trying to stay in their financial lane by penning
the book, "How To Survive In A Recession."
“I said
in the second verse of ‘I Run’ I was gonna
write a book about how to survive in a recession, so then people began to ask
when was the book coming out?” Slim told RapFix.
“I was just playing, really. But when people began to inquire, asking
and wanting me to write the book, I just started writing in my iPhone different
tips you can use to stack up bread. Then I met a girl who was a publisher, so
I told her what it was and we put it together. We made it happen.”
The 47-page
e-book offers an entertaining prospective into the mind of an independent
artist who managed to carve out his own very comfortable financial niche
amongst hip-hop’s fiscal elite. The self-proclaimed Black Suze Orman offers sound
financial advice in the humorous tone fans have come to recognize via Thugga’s lyrical wordplay and retweetable
Twitter commentaries.
“I watch
the Suze Orman
Show,” Slim told RapFix. “That’s
part of the reason I’m cheap. You’ll see regular 9 to 5 people
and they’ll be like, 'we have a million in this, $600, 000 in that and this amount of liquid' and they just going
to work every day. And I’m like, hold up, man, what are we doing wrong?
How regular people gettin’ all this? It just
opened my eyes and I started watching the show more and more and I learned. I
always been cheap, but it made me more up on game and aware of what’s
going on around me.”
For instance,
Slim Orman advises one to never have Bentley bills
with a Benz salary: "This goes back to one of the most basic rules;
don’t live beyond your means. Don’t buy a big house when you
don’t make big money. I always say if you can’t buy it THREE
times over, you can’t afford it. Don’t drive a Bentley on a Benz
income."
Criminals
are choosing free room and board over freedom
"Inmate
Population Spikes In Local Jail" (WCTV.tv)
Thomas County,
Georgia- The Thomas County Jail has seen a 23% increase in inmate population
over a three to four month period.
Sheriff's
Deputies believe the poor economy could be a contributing factor.
"Some
people that are coming to jail are not bonding out because of
economics," said Thomas County Sheriff's Office spokesman Capt. Steve
Jones. "It's cheaper to stay here and to sit for a couple weeks and then
go to court."
State prisons
are also trying to reduce their inmate populations, which results in more
offenders being placed on probation.
"Work is
difficult to find and when they're not working, they're not paying fines, and
when they're not paying fines, they're not reporting to probation officers.
Thus they revoke probation and when they revoke probation, they come to
county jail," Capt. Jones added.
Adult
toys are selling better than children's toys
"Sex Toy Market Booms Amid Recession" (RT)
Sex toys have
been around for more than a century, and it turns out that the industry is
impenetrable in the times of economic downtown.
For many
industries across the United States, the economic downtown has resulted in
many companies making fewer profits and devoting far fewer resources to
innovation and development. One industry that’s not the case for is the
sex toy industry.
“There’s three areas of the economy that tend to do
okay in a recession: alcohol, make-up and sex toys,” said Jacq Jones, owner of Sugar Sex Toy Store in Baltimore,
Maryland. Jones said her store has been open for five years and 2012 has been
her best year ever, in terms of sales.
For some
specific items, like Luna Balls, sales are through the roof.
“I used
to sell one or two a month,” Jones said. “Now I’m selling
ten a week.”
"Soft
Game Sales Weigh on Hasbro's 2Q Earnings" (Associated Press)
PAWTUCKET, R.I.
- Toy maker Hasbro Inc. said Monday its second-quarter net income dropped 25
percent on weak sales in most categories as revenue in major product
categories including boys, girls and games declined.
But higher
prices and cost-cutting helped the maker of Monopoly, Nerf and My Little Pony
beat analysts' earnings expectations. Its shares rose 4 percent.
The second
quarter is seasonally small for toy makers, which make the bulk of their
sales during the second half of the year and the holiday season. But it can
give indications about the strength or weakness of toy demand.
Revenue fell 11
percent in the latest quarter, missing Wall Street expectations. That drop
reflected lower sales in Hasbro's boys, girls and games categories. Hasbro
said that was partly planned, because the company is working to make
inventory more in line with when people buy toys, later on in the year.
Consumers
are trying to turn disposables into returnables
"CVS
Discovers Used Enemas on Store Shelves" (First Coast News)
JACKSONVILLE,
Fla. -- There's an empty shelf at the CVS store at 9509 San Jose Blvd.
No enemas;
instead, a sign directed people who bought them to call a consumer hotline.
Police are concerned that people unknowingly bought used enemas.
Police say a
man began buying the enemas in March and started returning them in April.
On Tuesday, a
CVS clerk thought it was strange the same man kept returning enemas. When
they checked the enema boxes currently on the shelf, they discovered they
were already used.
More testing
confirmed the dirty truth: fecal matter on the enemas bottles ready for sale.
"I was
just kinda shocked. But in today's economic times,
like I said before, people are doing some strange things. This has got to
rank up there with strange," said customer Bob Robbins.
Moving
stairs are the new restrooms
"Human
Waste Shuts Down BART Escalators" (SFGate)
When work crews
pulled open a broken BART escalator at San Francisco's Civic Center Station
last month, they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call
a hazardous-materials team.
While the sheer
volume of human waste was surprising, its presence was not. Once the stations
close, the bottom of BART station stairwells in downtown San Francisco are
often a prime location for homeless people to camp for the night or find a
private place to relieve themselves.
All those
biological excretions can gum up the wheels and gears of BART's escalators,
shutting them down for long periods of extended repairs, increasing station
cleaning costs and creating an unpleasant aroma for morning commuters.
Of course, that
doesn't even include run-of-the-mill weirdness like Presiden't
Barack Obama's claim that "the
private sector is doing fine" or Republican
challenger (and multimillionare) Mitt Romney's
remark that "there
were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink
slip."
To paraphrase the Grateful
Dead, what a long strange trip it is nowadays.
Michael J. Panzner
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