Loose Gravel

The only reason the NCAA is here in Oregon at all is because Oregon Legislature voted a couple years ago to terminate their Sports Action game, which allowed folks to bet on the NFL games. They were suckers bets--parlays--but that one program alone raked in over 2 million dollars in state revenue annually (Oregon Lottery pulls in over a billion for the State annually). I could never understand why the NCAA cared who bet on the NFL and how that affected the basketball tournament, but that is the stance they maintained. 

So I've been grumpy about this Sports Action trade for NCAA tournament because, well, it's fun to make small wagers on football and the NCAA is just a fundamentally ridiculous body of geezers enforcing 1950's sensibilities. But you know what? If the NCAA wasn't so stupid with their rules, I would have never scored my first Loose Gravel sports interview today. 

As I was walking back to work downtown today I spotted a few members of the Illinois "Fighting Illini". I stopped and chatted with Mike Davis for a few minutes. Here is his card:

Dear Mr. Gravel,

Why are all the Facebook ads all about losers who figured out how to make thousands of dollars a month by working from home?

Thanks,

iwannworkfromhometoo


Hi Iwannaworkfromhometoo,

After I received your note, I checked my own facebook account to see what you mean. I cropped a screenshot of my page. Here it is:

Geez, there are a ton of ads about folks able to make lots of dough from the comfort of their own home!

I like the top ad "I got $11,668 in only a month", like this is some impossibility. If you make $150,000 at your day job for "the man", you would be bringing in $12,500 monthly. Of course, your ad might read, "I earn $12,500 each month, click here to earn your degree and work hard like I did...".

The bottom ad is a little weirder. "Learn how I make $1250 a week from my kitchen table in my underwear"????? I think the picture paired with that quote tells us everything you need to know. It might as well read, "Learn how to rake in dough with porn cams in your house!"

If you go to the advertise page with facebook, it tells you about how you can make your own ad with their utility and target it to just the right folks. So maybe iwannaworkfromhometoo and I have something in common: Facebook thinks that our facebook profiles suggest we both want badly to be lazy and while simultaneously pulling down Bejamins. So be it.

On facebook,  most of the ad placements are in a rightside column. At the bottom of the row of ads, you can click on 'more ads', and then you a big list. I really liked these two side by side:

I wonder if I should click on the $75/hour or $100/hour? I'd like to make more money per hour, but what if I have more responsibilities? And could that stack of money the dude is holding look more ill-gotten? Wrapped in rubber bands? Remember folks: If he's holding $10,000, working at $75/hour rate, he put in 133 hours for those bucks. Nothing comes easy, right?

With just a little research about these ads, there is one resounding theme: Don't send anyone your money, because you shouldn't have to pay your employer, but vise-versa. Wise words, indeed. These types of ads have been around forever in newspapers, and Facebook is just the most recent, hottest ad farm. So iwannaworkfromhometoo, why does Facebook have a bunch of work from home ads? Gawker.com has a nice idea about that here. But I'm certain that the ads are there because lots people submit them, and lots of people click on them. If you grow tired of them, just click the "thumbs down" icon under the ad. You can cite the reason for the thumbs down as "misleading" or "offensive". That's what I did, and now I make $500/hourly working from the comfort of my mom's basement!

Last weekend I flew back to Texas to see my cousin get married. It was a blast. Huge fun had by all. Here's an observation: I was in the "old crowd".

Now technically, I think I was the oldest of groom's coevals, but his older brother and I are close in age. And my cousin, his rowdy friends and I are only a couple years apart in age, 33 on my end, 30 on the young end.

But the bride and her peers? I don't think one of them has had their 25th birthday yet. Now, I didn't really feel old around them, but I'm certain that when they first met the beard and dissolving hairline the thought was, "Who dug out this artifact?", or, "My aunt Sally might like him...".

What do 24 year-olds like to do? With state college barely in the rear view mirror, I'm guessing nightly beer and horseplay. It's that magical time in post-pubescence when you can live like you're in college while actually pulling in a paycheck. Nowadays I like television, like 24 (Monday nights!) and Lost (Wednesday nights!). That's because television happens inside my house, where I need to be now pretty much every night.

But wait! I have pictures of my son and wife!
Who cares, geezer!

And dog!
What a bore!

So you might think, "Gavin, I bet you wish you could party like a 24 year-old!"

The truth is, I can party like a 24 year-old, but I choose not to. You see, with my ever-increasing value on sleep, I don't like it disrupted. A couple weeks ago I went out late at night for a little while and ran around with some youngsters. It wasn't all that great. Any fun I had was countered by thoughts about how tomorrow's misery was increasing incrementally with each passing minute away from bed. What a bore, indeed.

But the old crowd did well hanging with the youngsters this past weekend, no doubt. Up past 3am a couple of times, we were. That's pretty good. Too bad on Tuesday morning after the weekend I still felt beat-up and tired. Betcha the young crowd felt great Tuesday morning, putting together more horseplay plans for the next weekend.

I noticed the old crowd filled up the wedding hotel jacuzzi a couple days in a row. Gotta relax after those hard nights of socializing. Unfortunately, a glance or two from the young crowd getting out of their cars and walking past the back of my grizzly bear shoulders sticking out, and I was crossed off even Aunt Sally's list.