The third time they asked me, rather reprovingly, why I did it, I said (something like):

"Because I don’t like fuss." Lame.

Revising.

I don’t want to spend any of the limited time we have together (I mean that in the practical and existential sense both) worrying about who deserves what.

If I can cut that wasted breath short by pulling out a card, that’s what I’m going to do, at least until the experian baliff comes to bring the hammer down on my profligate capers.

The flip side of who is deserving is that sometimes generosity will be taken advantage of.

To the tune of three or four beers, or whatever …

Again, I don’t give a rodent pucker.

I am a willing chump in the service of the greater good, okay?

On the political side, we dole out our charity according to "means testing".

‘Well that bitch doesn’t deserve free cheese for her kids, or a welfare check, if she’s got a perfectly able man stashed away in her bedroom’.

‘Well that kid doesn’t deserve free college because his parents are one-percenters and can afford to pay for it.’

I say: The Pentagon doesn’t deserve a tenth of the money we rush to cram down their pieholes decade after decade, and Exxon doesn’t deserve corporate welfare, and Amazon doesn’t deserve to get away with paying zero taxes.

When it comes to individual people, it’s a different story.

I don’t care if she deserves free cheese. I’ll buy it anyway, and happily, with my taxes.

I don’t choose to worry about what his parents can afford. Maybe they hate him. Here you go, kid. Tuition and books. Don’t fuck it up.

If I was a one-percenter, I wouldn’t cash my social security checks, even though I would deserve them.

I’m an idiot about money and that’s no lie.

But I honestly believe that my idiocy is better than judging and scrooging my way through this one miracle life.

Now here’s another beer for whoever wants one.

And let’s talk about something else.