Cash-Only -- The Eternal Lake Of Fire

You would think, really think, based on all the latest advertisements, that knowing your credit score is tantamount to knowing whether God is going to accept you into the Kingdom of Heaven.

What is this all about? Some entity named FICO, an entity shrouded in mystery, develops a credit scoring formula that's proprietary (read: you are not authorized to know it and will never know how it's developed) that's used to determine your worthiness.

You apply for credit (die), and you become subjected to the whims of a spooky, all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise Credit Bureau (God) as to whether you are granted said credit (allowed into heaven) or banished to a sub-human cash-only existence (the eternal lake of fire).

The commercials for freecreditreport.com...what a piece of advertising brilliance. They've actually convinced Americans...that there's an invisible bureau (God), that monitors everything you do, every second, of every day. And they have a list of ten things (the Commandments) you are not supposed to do, and if you do any, any! of those ten things (default, 30 days late, too many inquiries, not enough history, close an account, up a credit limit, too many open accounts, 60 days late, failure to pay), they have a special place full of fire, and smoke, and burning, and torture, and anguish, where they will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry, for ever and ever, until the end of time (with all those other creditworthless saps)...but they love you! They love you as a consumer, and they need your money! There's nothing free about freecreditreport.com, they fuck you over with a required monthly subscription to their monitoring bureau to gain access to your "free" credit score.

The freecreditreport commercials deride and chide a waiter in a pirate-themed restaurant (a noble enough job, in my opinion) as the end-result, the end game, of what you'll become if you fail to send money to them so they can send back your credit score.

Another example of how Americans fail to recognize the valuable contributions of workers, of work, of the dignity of work. How we've come to denigrate the mechanic, the laborer, the gardener, the homemaker, the waiter and the busboy.


Think...what do most Americans believe would be the worst public humiliation? A shoe thrown at them? Asking for money on the side of a road? A wardrobe malfunction? Nope, it's trying to pay for goods at a store with a credit card in front of a line of other consumers and the minimum-wage clerk telling you your card's been denied. The worst posssible form of American humiliation -- you might as well take your own life with a shotgun if that happens.