Planning your summer ‘stay-cation’

By JAMES GROB Courier sports editor

June 14, 2008 12:14 am

— You can do what you want, but I’m not going to let the corporate media trick me into thinking everything is fine and dandy.
I’m going to go on vacation this summer. I don’t know how far I’ll go, and I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing, but the fact of the matter is, there is going to be some hard-core vacationing, and I’m going to be participating.
Last week, I was watching one of those 24-hour cable news stations and they brought in some kind of travel expert — I’ll just call him Skippy. I don’t exactly know what made Skippy a travel expert, and I’m not really sure how you become a travel expert in the first place. I don’t know if there was some kind of travel expert institution Skippy had to attend, or perhaps Skippy started out as a travel apprentice and learned the travel ropes until he become a travel expert.
Anyway, Skippy was talking about how the high costs of gasoline, airline tickets, food, hotels, etc. are causing those of us among the great unwashed to alter, rearrange and even cancel our summer vacation plans. This was not news to me. I did not need Skippy or any other travel expert to explain that to me.
Skippy — bless his heart — went on to suggest that those of us who are feeling the economic crunch should consider taking what he called a “stay-cation.” He described a “stay-cation” as a vacation you take where you don’t go anywhere. He went on to suggest a few activities we can all do while we’re home on our “stay-cations.”
I decided at that point that I didn’t like Skippy all that much.
Taking a vacation is the unalienable right of every American citizen. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the Constitution, and if it isn’t, it should be.
We work our tails off all year long just so we can take a week or two and go somewhere and do something with our families or maybe even our friends. That’s the point of living in these United States. I am required to take a vacation. Maybe I won’t be able to take a big one, but I’m going to take one. Don’t expect me to be happy and content with the idea of not taking one.
What Skippy and others in the corporate media are doing is propaganda at its most distasteful. Make no mistake, those folks on television like Skippy are all quite wealthy and all of them are going on big vacations to exotic locales this summer.
They’re attempting to convince us thin-wallet types that it’s OK to be poor, that it’s OK to just sit around the house for a week or two instead of hitting the road to enjoy whatever new experiences we happen to run into. We’re supposed to happily accept our fates while those upper-crust new-money bluebloods party on their own private islands.
If these people can fool us into convincing ourselves that we’re happy not taking a vacation, then we won’t figure out that — for some reason — they have all the money while we do all the work. Once we figure that out, we’ll figure out that there’s something very screwy about the equity of the current economic situation in this great nation. Then maybe we’ll start asking some questions that they don’t want to answer.
Skippy knows that if he can fool the working class masses into believing that we’d have more fun at our homes, we’ll be less likely to find out where Skippy’s summer home is and less likely to beat him up and take his home for ourselves. Skippy’s no dummy.
Well I’m not going to fall for it. I don’t know how far I’ll go, and I don’t know what I’ll be doing, but I refuse to take a “stay-cation.” In fact, I think it’s a little bit arrogant for someone like Skippy to make up a stupid word like that and just assume I’ll happily accept it into my oral and written vocabulary. I’ve got your “stay-cation” right here, Skippy.
Some of the things Skippy suggested we do with our time off at home included reading a book, working out at the gym, sleeping late, shopping, trying out some new recipes, rearranging the furniture, scrapbooking, going to a local farmers’ market, playing board games and renting and watching some classic movies.
If reading that list of suggested “stay-cation” activities doesn’t make you want to find Skippy and throw him off a bridge, then you weren’t paying close enough attention. He might as well have been asking us to mow his lawn and fix him a drink.
Actually, that gives me an idea. I think I am going to go find Skippy. I think I’ll spend my entire vacation with him. I’ll do whatever Skippy does — all the things he suggested we do. We’ll play some board games. We’ll watch some movies. Maybe Skippy and I can spend a romantic evening together at Skippy’s house. We’ll order pizza and open up a bottle of red wine and do some scrapbooking after we’re done rearranging Skippy’s furniture.
You hear me Skippy? I’m coming to get you. And I’m wearing Bermuda shorts.
Sports editor James Grob can be contacted at sports@ottumwacourier.com.