A proposal if you will:

There are two potential terms to take.

1)You are granted $500,000,000 in a single tax free lump sum. You are free to do with this money anything you please. The caveat is that if you accept this money will not live past your 55th birthday. This is not to say that you will live to 55, but you will not live longer than 55. Life will take it's course, and you might get hit by a car tomorrow (ironic?).

2) You get no payout. You are however, told that you will live no longer than 85 years. The same caveat applies; this does not mean that you will live to be 85, but you might.

Now the inherent question here that needs to be answered is: "How much is your time worth?". This of course goes beyond the standard "Hey, what does it cost to get you to do something for me for an hour?" This goes beyond that, because I think most people can justify an hour of their time one way or the other. This is to say, that the person willing to accept the terms of the first instance is potentially willing to gamble 30 years of their life for a sum of $500,000,000.

Keep in mind, that the first instance will free of the "rat race", and your remaining year would be spent pursuing pure pleasure and happiness. However, in the second case while you are working a standard 8 hours a day, you have 30 more years of life to live. Things to see. People to meet. Experiences to experience.

What would you do?

Some people. Some people just make my head hurt. Like. A lot.

Let me re-enact a text message convo (thats short for conversation for all you non hip internets people) that I had with a friend today. I must say that I have lost some hope in humanity, but alas I will try to press on.

Friend: Does America have a Prime Minister?
Me: Are you serious?
Friend: [apparantly before receiving my indignant response] And if we do, is it Colin Powel? If it's not Colin Powel, then who is?
Me: No. Just no!
Friend: Why don't we have a Prime Minister?
Me: Because America is a Democratic Republic
Friend: Then who is Colin Powel?
Me: He's the former Secretary of State
Friend: I should probably look up Democratic Republic, since I am studying to be a lawyer.

Besides the obvious problems with this interaction, there are actually a few more.
1)She graduated at the top of her class from Scarsdale High School; one of the best public schools in the country
2)She maintains almost a 4.0 in college
3)She is going to be a lawyer, and I just KNOW she's going to be filthy rich because of it.
4)I hate people.

Is techmology going to be the end of us all? Are we in fact destined to be nothing but batteries to the Matrix like sentient Artificial Intelligence? Well, that's not really what I was thinking about, but that would also suck a little. I guess. So I was using my Garmin Navigation last night, and I must admit is did come in handy.

The Dilemma: Get from the Bronx to Queens, without paying a toll.
The Solution: Drive an extra 8 miles (23 minutes in NYC) through Manhattan, driving the entire length of 2nd ave, until you hit Queens.

So I must admit, that while it worked out, I couldn't help but think: "What would I have done if I didn't have my handy dandy navigation unit?" I was scared for a second because I realized that I didn't know how to do it without the Garmin!!! Without this box of circuits and wires, I'd be relegated to an existence of toll paying, and traffic! I didn't think I could handle this. As a frantic last ditch effort to claim some of my independence, nay, my humanity! I decided to take the White Stone bridge, instead of the Throgs Neck bridge like it had told me to. I was feeling good, I knew where I was going, and that I didn't need any damn machine to lead me home. I'm a man darnit! I know where I'm going! But then it happened.

I realized that I was the only car on the bridge (north or southbound) and that the lights on the bridge were all out. It dawned on me that I was very near to 3 very real airports, all of which having 100's of very big, very heavy planes flying in and out at any given time. What if one of the planes hits the bridge?! I thought out of nowhere. I guess I'll have to do what they do in the movies (double clutch while cutting the wheel and pulling the e-brake, to do a sick-nasty U-turn) then drive back over the bridge before the car falls into the water...I'm freaking out at this point, keep in mind however that I'm just driving home from Queens to Yonkers, a drive I've done probably in excess of 400 times. If the car falls into the crevice left by the burning plane, I need to grab my cell phone to call 911. As if my cell phone would work after falling 500 feet into the cold dark water below; and that's of course assuming that I'm even able to get out of the watery grave that I call a Honda. I'm a lifeguard, I should be able to swim to land from here; am I closer to the Queens, or the Bronx side... But then it dawns on me that I'll have to swim with the current if I have any chance of staying alive, so I poise myself to make the front pages of the NY Post "23 year old male miraculously swims to shore 500 airplane riders sink to watery abyss". What if there are sharks or some other crazy thing like the Cracker from Pirates of the Caribbean? I don't want to mess with that, maybe just staying in my car and waiting to fade to black would be better?!

So like I said, technology is out to get us. It tricked me into going onto the bridge with the lights out, so that I would freak out. That's so messed up! I never did anything to Garmin to warrant such mental anguish?!

But seriously, am I going loco? Is this normal? Does anyone else ever just freak out and make a catastrophe out of the world in a single split second? What's wrong with me? Any constructive advice would be welcomed, and "you need some drugs" will not be taken as valid advice here...