What Kind of Samaritan are You?

The Washington Post had an interesting article on just how greedy our society has become. Well… ok, it didn’t come out and say that, but it was about citizens – Samaritans if you will – finding cell phones, blackberries etc and when the owner calls to ask for it back, they ask for a cash reward. What? Who taught these people their manners? I would never even think to ask for money for the objects return. In fact, I once found a wallet at Hecht’s and didn’t even go through it. I just handed it over to an employee for safe keeping. Turns out, the wallet belonged to the friend of a friend who was shopping with me. Had I rifled through it and taken the money then what? That would have been awwwkwaard!

The article states,

Rothbart, patron saint of found objects, the man who once tracked down the owner of an un-addressed photo album because he couldn’t bear someone losing family memories, does not believe the rules of returning are black-and-white. ” Really good Samaritans, if they find a wallet, they return it intact,” he says. “Some people find a wallet, take the money, but return the important stuff. That’s not evil.”

I think it’s just tacky. Tacky, tacky, tacky, tacky. He goes on to discuss the people who believe in karma and what goes around comes around. I believe that’s true and that when you do bad things, what comes back around to you is normally worse. Why bother?

Movie Theater Rip-off

These days it’s not worth the price of a ticket to go out to the movies. In fact, the last time my husband and I went out it cost us somewhere around $25-$30 for two tickets, one popcorn, and one soda to be shared. And that’s for what exactly? To sit in an overcrowded theater with obnoxious people and their loud talking, cell phones ringing, and general annoyance. Ugh, forget it. I’d rather sit in my house and watch a movie – my surround sound works great. I can wait until the DVD comes out, buy it, watch it, and throw it away and still spend less than going to the movies.

Some people will argue that the whole experience of getting out of the house and seeing a movie on the big screen is worth it. Hmm, I disagree. The most recent movie we saw was300. That was a prime example of the type of movie to see on the big screen. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but my surround sound would have been almost as good. Plus I wouldn’t have had to catch a 1pm showing (roughly 25 people at the theater) and STILL deal with people who chose to sit directly behind us and talk loudly until five minutes into the movie. If I have to turn around and give you a nasty look, that means you are being too loud. These weren’t kids either, they were mid 30’s early 40’s people who should know better.

Anyway, up in Gaithersburg, MD, we went to see a movie last summer, a matinée. Or what should have been a matinée. However, at this particular theater, matinées ended at 4pm – even still the price difference was something like $1.50. That’s highway robbery and I refuse to participate. If the movie sucks, I should get my money back at what prices are now. This is why for my family we can wait until it hits DVD and put it on our Netflix queue.

Netflix

Thank you, thank you, thank you to whoever created Netflix. Ever since we had our daughter we haven’t gotten out much. Netflix is our saving grace. Now we can keep up with all of the movies we don’t have time to catch in the theaters. Even better they give suggestions based on our ratings. We’ve found some great movies we wouldn’t have seen otherwise through that. The most amusing one thus far is Confetti. It’s like the movie Best In Show, but it spoofs a magazine and the wedding industry. It was laugh out loud funny throughout, which is rare in movies these days.

Now if only we could get some friends to link with us so we could check out other Netflix queues. Sigh… that’s a whole other issue.