I’ve been pissed off all day today because of my go-rounds with a certain commenter on Pam’s site named michael. He reminds me that unfeeling “let them eat cake” rich people piss me off.

Let me clarify. Not all rich people piss me off. I applaud hard work, luck, talent, and good fortune. I’m happy that some people get to live the most grandiose versions of the American Dream. And many rich people realize that they were lucky to get where they are, that no amount of hard work and talent will get you rich without a few lucky breaks along the way, too.

But when I get hit with jabs like “i gave more to charity last year than your entire salary”, well, it pisses a Radical off (to borrow AngryBlackBitch’s third-person self-reference habit). Or “my friends and i thought we were merely well off, but according to all the tables we read, we’re in the top 1% of all earners.” And that insistence that poor people are poor because they won’t “move to where the opportunities are” and they “choose to not work hard” crap, gawd it makes me madder than Robert Novak at a MoveOn rally.

What’s rich? You can keep your statistical tables. In my eye, rich means you could lose all sources of income and still eat and afford your home for six months. And for jerks like michael to criticize hard working people like my wife and I as lazy, when we would be out on the street starving if I lost even one month of salary, well that just blows my gasket. I’ll admit it; I secretly wish for money-grubbing bastards like him to develop painful anal cysts, unrelenting tinnitus, and a tell-tale herpes complex that alternates between upper lip and penile glans. You know, nothing deadly or severely devastating, just something that knocks him down a peg or two on the “my life is blissfully perfect, I’m rich and happy, I did it, so can you” scale.

Jealous? You betcha. I’d love to be saddled with a $96,000 property tax burden, giving over $40,000 a year to charity, while sipping champagne and eating brie with my top 1% friends. It’s also a bit of self-loathing, too. How is it I can be so smart, get good grades, work so hard, served my country, and write with the flair of Hunter Thompson and Mark Twain’s semi-retarded delusional love child on absinthe, yet this malodorous twat who can’t spell or manage the SHIFT key is raking in dough hand over fist?

I keep telling myself there’s more to life than money. I have an incredible array of friends and family. I’m blessed with the most perfect wife I could have dreamed of. I’ve snorted cocaine off of a strippers’ tits. I’ve had carnal relations with three women at one time. I’ve performed onstage in front of hundreds of screaming adoring fans. I’m blessed with fairly good health. I’ve stood on top of the World Trade Center and I’ve been passed out on tequila on the beach in South Padre Island, Texas. I’ve ridden a Harley at 115MPH through the LA freeway system from Pasadena to San Luis Obisbo. I’ve jammed with members of the Allman Brothers Band. (Note: this list is in no way chronological.) I’ve had a really great life and I’ve got tons of fascinating stories.

Yet, it never makes me feel better when I see those red digits in my bank account or when I’m deciding which bill collector to stiff so we can have groceries this month. I suppose michael would tell me that being poor is the price I’ve had to pay for having all that irresponsible fun, and I can agree there is a grain of truth to that. Had I stuck with college, concentrated on computer programming, and got in early at Micron, I probably would have that nice house and nice car and powerboat and Caribbean vacation and trophy wife and 2.3 kids. I’d also probably be a dull, miserable nerd who would’ve always dreamed what life would have been like if I’d stuck with music, working 80-hour weeks and drowning my sorrows in a pint of Southern Comfort.

I’m most pissed when these people call me a socialist. I’m not. I don’t care that some people are fortunate enough to become ludicrously rich. I’m just appalled that so many people have to be devastatingly poor for that to happen. I’m luckier than most — I have a full-time job that pays really well — yet still each month is a paycheck-to-paycheck struggle just to stay in the black. I can’t even imagine the struggle truly poor people are going through.

Why is it socialist to think that anyone who works a full-time job in this country should have no problem affording the basics of food, clothing, and shelter? Why do some of these Richie Riches feel the need to gut social programs so the truly poor can become even poorer? Do they believe without the relentless pressure to avoid starvation, sickness, and homelessness, that our society would collapse, is that it? Really, I’m grasping at straws here, somebody fill me in.

I had a point when I started writing this, but I lost it three paragraphs ago. I think I just needed to get some of this emotion out of my head and onto my screen. And I never pass up an opportunity to write something like “malodorous twat”.