Monday, March 06, 2006

I Hate Pennies Because They Are Stupid

Let me reiterate: I HATE pennies.

There are so many reasons to abolish the penny but I want to focus on three main points:

1. Pennies cost more to produce than what they’re worth
2. Pennies are a pain in the ass
3. Pennies are gross

First, I realize that pennies aren’t made out of the valuable commodity copper anymore but I can’t imagine zinc being any cheaper to mine and mold for one goddamn cent. Imagine how meaningless your life would be working for a manufacturer that produces a product that is essentially worthless by the time it gets into the hands of consumers. When the penny is abolished, we’ll shut down all the penny factories and convert them to nickel and dime factories, essentially diverting precious time and resources to currencies that actually have value.

Second, I am more than willing to let the government have a one time sales tax increase to round up transactions to the nearest five cent increment in order to never have to look at another stupid penny for the rest of my life. The windfall from such a tax could halt our skyrocketing deficit from growing for at least a couple of hours and more importantly; I’ll never have to deal with dirty looks from cashiers when I try to dump my change on them for a soda or a bag of chips or whatever.

You know that dirty look I’m talking about, that look of contempt for wasting 2 seconds of their time to count and sort the change into the right bin. I am actually more discouraged by the half ass sympathy smile that follows the transaction that just says, hey dude, maybe some day things will turn around for you so that you’ll be able to purchase goods and services using REAL currency like dollar bills and credit cards. Seriously, who wants to deal with that when they have a snack attack?

Third, pennies are disgusting and they stink something fierce. Think of the smelliest, most disease infested areas you can imagine and I’ll bet you there will be at least three pennies on the sticky ground of that place. I actually get nauseous when I see a grime covered penny sitting on the bottom of a urinal (this is where pennies congregate when they’re not gathering dust in piggy banks) because I know someday that cocksucker is going to end up right back in my hands along with my order the next time I go to McDonalds. Excuse me, I didn’t order diphtheria with my double cheeseburger, I don’t care if I only paid a buck for it.

The world is going to be a better and cleaner place when the penny is gone. As the leading champion of this movement, may I suggest that we take all of the left over pennies from circulation and melt them down to create a monument in my honor. If it was my choice, the monument would be a giant statue of me knocking out Abraham Lincoln. Your days are numbered, penny, mark my words!

And I was kidding about Honest Abe, he’s easily in my top five favorite presidents of all time, right between Millard Fillmore and Ronald Reagan. I’m also a huge fan of the five spot and have no intention of declaring war on that monetary unit. Yet…



There are 200,035,318,672 pennies in circulation today. That's 200,035,318,672 reasons not to get out of bed each morning.

4 comments:

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Anonymous said...

The penny has out lived its usefulness. I whole heartedly agree with your idea of a one time tax adjustment to permanently remove the penny from circulation. I was telling Mable this very idea the other day. So I says to Mable, I says . . . I'll finish this later

Anonymous said...

I have different (better) idea. Let's all throw any pennies we have on our persons at Ben any time we see him. That would get those blasted pennies out of circulation, cause no one's gonna bend over to pick up a couple of filthy pennies, and Ben's damn sure not going either. With this plan we all get rid of our nasty pennies and have a hearty laugh at Ben's expense.

Anonymous said...

F#!; Pennies! I hate them too. We wrote a song about it. I hope you enjoy it while you spend your day hating pennies.