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  • » Name: Amanda Bassa
  • » Location: VA
  • » Member Since: 09/21/07
  • » Bio: student, future change maker, and everything you wouldn't expect me to be.
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The Undisputed Truth

Weekend P.S.A.


July 18, 2008 | Tags: none

In case you haven’t heard, I don’t have much of a life lately. I wake up, go to work, do some work, pretend to do some work while getting up to date on what’s going on in the world, go home, attempt to write, get tired, then go to sleep. It’s absolutely thrilling. Seriously, it is. Not only am I boosting my work experience credentials, but I’m getting some money in my pockets again. Too bad it’ll be dwindling by the end of next month, and too bad it’s sitting in a bank so I can’t actually feel the satisfaction of having a fat wallet, but it feels good to know that I can at least afford a plane ticket for a vacation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pretty broke and trying to finish up college, but I’m feeling satisfied that I can buy myself a legitimate, healthy lunch every now and then and not have to pinch pennies for the rest of the week. 

…At least for now. I’m sure it’ll change soon enough. Gotta love an economy that’s not in good shape. 

Anyway, since I take my money very seriously and try not to spend frivolously because I’m not a CEO of some company and don’t have much disposable income, I tend to be rather cautious about purchases and where my money ends up. This may be part of the reason that I don’t buy very many albums – if I pay ten bucks for some music that I could have used to buy myself a grilled chicken salad or something physically beneficial to me, end up eating like shit for the rest of the week because I feel guilty that I spent ten bucks on something I could have downloaded for free and therefore should compensate for my ten dollar loss by not spending much on food, and then see the artist on TV a week later rolling around in a Lamborghini Diablo after getting bailed out for a DUI charge? I’m not going to be very satisfied with my purchase and where my money went. Not to mention what kind of record label execs end up with most of the profits. But that’s another story for another day. 

My point isn’t actually about illegal downloading or supporting artists or anything like that this time around. I spend a lot of time on computers these days, and to keep myself sane I’ll look at something not too serious every now and then. A lot of this involves online shopping sites, small-scale local news publications, and mainstream news publications. It also leaves me a lot of time to research anything that comes to my mind. Lately I’ve been in a political kind of mood, and I’ve been paying attention to a lot of the world’s various injustices and thinking of ways to stop them, as well as prevent future occurrences.  

Just so you know, that’s a pretty surefire way to give yourself a headache. The world is a rather fucked up place these days, and when you think about it too long, it really makes your head hurt. 

Anyway, I’ve realized that a lot of people think a good solution to the world’s ills is to just donate to charity or dedicate their lives to some non-profit organization that they discovered. I’ve also realized that a lot of these places aren’t exactly what they seem. How do you know where your money is going? If you’re working for them, do you know the person who is in charge of the organization personally? Do you know what they truly stand for? In most cases, you can do some pretty simple research and unearth any dark secrets about these organizations (or corporations, figureheads, etc.). But in some cases, you may simply never know what these people did with your money. And when you think about it, that's pretty scary. 

I was reminded of this when I read this news story from CNN about how a fake website/organization was created to fool FARC into releasing some hostages: http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/18/fake-aid-group-web-site-helped-dupe-colombian-rebels/ 

And this was the Colombian military that was making this shit up. Not that this is anything new, but it’s a good reminder to be careful about things that seem to have good intentions. I’d love to believe that I didn’t really need to tell anybody this because we’re all sensible enough to keep our eyes open, but I’ve seen far too many people fall for all types of scams. That’s why these things continue – if they didn’t work and nobody fell for them, they’d probably stop wasting their time trying to get people to buy it. 

So, let this be the lesson/reminder for the weekend – don’t end up like the FARC and let somebody play you to their advantage, and don’t take things (especially things that deal with your money) at face value. Anyone can make a website and get it to look convincing. The internet’s a crazy place, and it doesn’t seem to be settling down anytime too soon. 

Have a safe weekend DX…here’s to hoping that those gas prices drop sooner rather than later!

 


The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the writer and not necessarily those of HipHopDX.com or Cheri Media Group.

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