Well Isn't That Just Rich

HOW cool (and yes I mean to yell) is this website??

http://www.globalrichlist.com

You go to it, enter your annual income in dollars or euros or pesos or chickens or Lucky Charms or whatever it is you use for currency, and it tells you where you rank among the rest of the world.

Now, like online IQ tests (which my husband was rather disgusted to find out last night that I one, had taken, and two, had not scored the near-genius levels he himself would score on such a thing --- if he were to lower himself to such a petty and stupid exercise -- which he WOULDN'T, of course....he's just saying...) I question the validity of the rich list website -- interesting concept, but I'm questioning their ability to pinpoint EXACTLY where I fall among the world's inhabitants. Do conjoined twins count as one person or two? How DID they find the time to survey approximately six billion people about their earning potential? Did they consider child labor?

I know that the point of the website is to show everyone who makes a comfortable living that they are, allegedly, clearly sooooo uber-wealthy compared to the rest of the world that they should donate money (in my case, they suggest just one hour's salary, approx $48.61) to some cause du jour to ease the unconscionable burden we are obligated to feel because we are able to Super Size our Mickey D's meals.

Dammit, I don't want social causes mixed in with my "hey, cool, try this out!" websites!!! Did the people on the Make-Your-Own-South-Park site ask you to give money to support all those homosexual teachers who wear mini-bearded-"Where's Waldo" type puppets on their hand?? No, they did not.

I have no real point today. I know we live a comfortable life; that I am a shopaholic; that I do not grasp the concept of yard sales and auctions and estate sales and would rather have one verrrrry overpriced thingy from Pottery Barn than six verrrry similar looking items from an auction place simply because I want to say that I have nice grown up things from Pottery Barn. I also understand that this makes no fiscal sense, and some night I am going to wake up buried in the back yard locked inside my verrrry overpriced Pottery Barn thingy while my husband cackles softly as he carries the shovel back to the garage and rejoices that he never has to deal with my neuroses, listen to the "Wicked" soundtrack or watch "Sense and Sensibility" or "Emma" one more time, EVER.

Wow did I get off topic. Anyway, if you are dying to know, I am the 46,777,565th richest person in the world. Many of those 46,777,564 other people are the professional athletes I used to work with, who often made about a gazillion-point-three dollars per at bat and whose job qualifications were to hit a ball 30 percent of the time (often less, given the ones I worked with) and the rest of the time, readjust their jock straps, spit, and think of interesting ways to either hit on or insult women in various languages. I know how much one of said former players whom I actually still like makes per year, so I entered that, and got this lovely derisive message:

You are in the top 0.001% richest people in the world.

You don't need to know any more than that (and besides our calculator can't do sums that big).

Please consider donating just a small amount of your enormous wealth to help some of the poorest people in the world. Many of their lives could be improved dramatically or even saved if you donate just one hour's salary (approx $2083.33)

-- And he's not even GOOD! I entered the amount of money I made per year when I was working in professional sports, and lo and behold, I was now the 601,655,887th richest person in the world, making about $17 an hour. I compared that to the $2000 an hour for someone doing a crappy job at playing a GAME, and eventually decided to sell my soul to corporate America for a reasonable price.

For the record, my husband and his family are slowly succeeding in making me see the value of auctions and not EVERYTHING we own is from Pottery Barn. Some of it is also from Crate & Barrel. All of it is covered in dog hair and salsa drippings. Having a baby actually contributed very little to our overall mess quotient.