thepowerofme

Suffering from bi-polar disorders can be very disheartening for those that are going through it.  For myself my disorder manifests itself in a little different way than from others that I have read about.  While I never get depressed, when my mood shifts it goes from happy go lucky day, to night of the living dead uncontrollable rage.  For the most part I had been doing pretty well dealing with things as they come up, but for some reason this month has been postal for my poor wife.  The main reason I believe it has been so hard on us this year is due to the Christmas season.  Instead of bringing forth a feeling of great joy and holiday desires it tends to fill my heart with such and uncontrollable anger I all most explode each and every day.

Today was one of those very special days that my world seemed to spin out of control.  I was on the phone with my lovely wife who was calling the auto dealership about how much it would cost to get our car fixed.  The work that needs to be done is to replace the power steering pump.  Nothing major in my eyes but for some reason the dealership believes that it must be a major inconvenience.  They quoted her a price of $800 smackers.  The cost breakdown is $400 for the part and $400 for the labor.  My God what do they believe the part is made out of, hardened gold.  And $400 big ones to put it on.  How hard could this be, you just pop the old one off and put the new one on.  With a price like that I would assume that they were going to be spending 5-6 hours working on this endeavour.  But I have digressed from the problem at hand.  When I heard the news I bit the hand that literally does feed me.  I was so mad I screamed and yelled into my poor cell phone till the red-line meter pegged out.  Then without warning something snapped, and unfortunately it was my poor cell phone.  Where once I had a perfectly good LG camera phone that was around five years old, I now own two very nice individual pieces that just don’t seem to work any more.  After the incident I felt terrible.

See, I no longer take my medication due to the fact of the out of control weight gain that it caused me to experience.  So the main fault of the tirade was my own.  For me every time I act like a 295 pound two year old it feels like a little piece of me just died.  I mean, who wants to walk around like a ticking time bomb just waiting for the timer to go off and every thing around me could become the object of my release.  While I have never, ever, ever gotten physical with my wife or dogs the thought still scares me every time I blow up.  Lots of the relaxation techniques that I use do work, including doing Sudoku, they tend not to work unless you can step away from the situation.  So my question to my fellow friends and bloggers what are the tips that you use to take the bite out of a toxic situation?

After hearing from my wife how Katie Holmes spent, some say 14-20 million dollars since she has been on Broadway for living expenses I was outraged.  What type of living does she do?  What could a normal person do in their lifetime with what she wasted in a short amount of time.  I for one have to ask myself when is enough, enough.  How many homes does one person really need?  Or what is the point of having a multi million dollar home.  So some one can have something to fight about after you are dead?  My friends our great country has become a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.  We would rival the Romans decadent lifestyles with what our celebrities waste in any given day.  So I had to ask myself what would happen if a select group of celebrities decided that they had enough money for the year and decided to give up what they made in one year.  At first I was greatly astonished with what I found out and thought how in the world do we even acknowledge their charitable giving in comparison to what they bring in.  After further reflection I realized how many times do I not give because I don’t have the money, yet I can smoke three to four packs of cigarettes each and every week.  So before I begin to show you all the research that I came up with let me precept with this, I do not want to doubt, question, or mar any ones fine name with what they do give each and every year in the name of charitable giving.  But think just for moment what they could do if they gave more.

I came up with a scenario that sets the basis for this investigation.  I went to Forbes to see who they rated as the top money making celebrities for the year of June 2007 to June 2008.  After finding that they were kind enough to let me know just how much that is.  Keep in mind the numbers are before paying attorneys, agents, business expenses or anything else.  Then I went to Wikipedia to see how old they were, they have a nice way of telling you their age under their picture, made it very easy for the math to happen after that.  I then went to the National Center for Health Statistics to see what the average life expectancy was in the United States.  That number is 77.8 years, not taking into account race, sex, or lifestyles that they live.  Good thing because one of the celebrities in question is a rapper.  Then subtracted ten million dollars from the overall income, because lets be honest what person in this world could not live the rest of their lives on ten million dollars.  Sure you may not be able to buy a Nancy Gonzalez Matte Crocodile Tote which retails on one Internet site for a whopping 3750.00 bucks.  But you sure would be able to eat any where you would want to that is for sure.

So here is the data, celebrities and what they could do if they truly gave till it hurt.  This will most definitely shock you.

1. J.K. Rowling earned a whopping 300 million dollars, she is currently 43 years old and should live another 34.8 years.  She could donate to charities $8,333,333.33 a year for the rest of her natural life.
2. Oprah earned a staggering 275 million smackers, she is currently 54 years old and should grace T.V. with her presence for another 23.8 years.  She could donate to charities $11,134,453.78 a year.
3. 50 Cent brought in 150 million fat ones, not bad for an ex drug dealer.  He is currently 33 and could give up $3,125,000.  He will be bringing rap luster to his listeners for another 44.8 years.
4. Jerry Bruckheimer with his hit television shows brought in a staggering 145 million.  He is 63 and will be dazzling us with great crime dramas for another 14.8 years.  He could loose $9,121,621.62 and create a new world order.
5. Steven Spielberg brought in 130 million.  He is 62 and should be with us for another 15.8 years.  He could throw into the pot $7,594,936.71.
6. Tyler Perry earned for the year 125 mill.  He is 39 years old and should be around for another 38.8 years.  He could contribute to bringing Americans food fund with $2,963,917.53 a year.
7. Tiger Woods played his way to earning 115 million.  He is 33 and should be around for 44.8 years to go.  He could putt into the hole a whopping $2,343,750.00.

With all that being said they could contribute a grand total of $44,617,012.97 in the first year.  The grand total of giving before the first team player left the team would be a staggering $660,331,791.66 smackers.  Now what in the world is going on when we have people starving in this country because they can not find work, and there are folks out there that could lose that much money and still live better than any of us?

Here is some other information for you all to think about.  While doing some research I stumbled across a new article about  the Ashtabula Service Center of the Salvation Army.  I was amazed by what I found inside.  Do you know that they figure for this fiscal year that they could be asked to serve a whopping 24,000 meals.  Amazing that there are so many needy people out there that look forward to eating here each and every day that it is open.  They look forward to the chance of getting a hot meal when they can.  The cost to prepare that meal is less than $1 and that includes the paper and plastic products necessary to serve it.  I was ashamed when I read that and know that I spent five to six dollars today on lunch.  Their yearly operating budget this year is $12,000, it was cut by $5,000 dollars from last year.  How in the world will they be able to meet their goals to feed a community of people each and every day.  With our power seven listed before they could be able to fund 2624.53 soup kitchens and raise their operating budget back up to 17k the first year.  Wouldn’t that be exciting!

But where would the rest of the money come from to make up the difference.  That’s right we need to find another seven thousand.  That answer is the tough one.  See it is easy to go and take the money from the rich lets face it there are still ninety three other celebs listed on the list.  But why should the be the only ones to lend a helping hand.  Yea, I know many of us are having enough problems just paying our own bills, but what we can do is get involved.  Sign up to volunteer in a soup kitchen this next month or maybe this next week.  Get involved, because if we all can give just a little bit of our time, money, and talents, just see what the world could become.