I'm A Believer!

This logo is property of The Monkees or someone other than me and is protected under trademark law or something. I am not making any money off it, but I am paying tribute to a truly great pop group...or something.


I'm A Believer was a hit song for the group The Monkees, in the 1960's. They also had a very popular television show of the same name.

Most people who remember the Monkees and their television show, assume that the group inspired the show. Actually, it was just the opposite. The show created the group. (An important fact to remember is that there were no actual monkeys in the Monkees.) Before the program debuted, there was no The Monkees, although there were probably monkeys, just none who could play lead guitar or sing.

It is very much like when a television or movie screen play, results not just in a movie or television show, but inspires a book too. The inane book, The Secret was a film, before it was a book, same thing, but I digress.

I have always been intrigued by the human tenancy to want to believe in stuff. I have heard magicians explain that even when they tell people that they are being tricked, they often refuse to believe it. The same is true when a psychic is unmasked as a fraud. "But he knew someone in my family had blue eyes. There's no way in hell he could know that, without me tellin' him. That there is a gen-u-ine psychic and you ain't tellin' me different."

Sylvia Browne, the skeptics favorite whipping-psychic, is very often, very publicly, very wrong. She said the kid in Missouri was dead and that the miners in West Virginia were alive. Both wrong, but Montel Williams still thinks she is a real psychic. (Note to self, take Montel off the TIVO to-do list.)

How often do people accept something simply because it was on the television or in the paper or even because some bonehead with a blog said it? Well, no one would believe what some bloggers say, so forget that part

How many people believe something simply because people before them believed the same thing, even people thousands of years ago? Wait, that one always gets me in trouble.

This explains why myths persist though. People want to believe, whether in ghosts or spacemen or Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster, even when there is no real proof of their existence. In an age where everything is recorded by someone, no one has a credible recording of any of these things, but yet belief persists.

What got me to thinking about this was a television commercial I saw for a local car dealer. They were advertising that, for this weekend only, if you bring in your trade, within 20 minutes they will;

1. Make you an offer for your car toward the purchase of one of their new cars, or
2. Make you an offer for your car toward the purchase of one of their used cars, or
3. Let you walk away.

Aren't those pretty much the only possible outcomes all the time? They are basically admitting that they normally hold you hostage to try and force the deal upon you, but for this weekend only, they will let you go mostly unmolested if you don't want their car. It is an idiotic advertisement on its face, but folks will show up because they want to believe that they can one up the car sales guys, even though we all have experience to the contrary.

A local import car dealer, you know a Toyota, Honda, Nissan or TOYOTA DEALER, got into hot water for advertising something that was too good to be true and which turned out not to be true at all.

These guys advertised that they were selling new cars at 50% off the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP). The credulous car buying public rushed down to this joint expecting to get the deal of a lifetime. They discovered that it was a just a big old lie. The deal wasn't really cars for half price, it was a garden variety lease. If you leased a $25,000 car for three years, with a sizable down payment, at the end of three years of payments, you could buy the car for $12,500.

Our state attorney general fined them $150,000 bucks for that scam. Besides, the world is full of three year old cars that can be had for half their original MSRP. Without making three years of lease payments for the privilege.

These cretins run misleading ads because they know that people want to believe they can get an unbelievable deal. Instead, the public should be asking themselves when was the last time a car dealer gave anyone an incredible deal? The answer would be never. Instead, the attorney general had to crackdown on the dealer, at least in part, because people believed the ad and rushed to the lot, only to be disappointed and outraged.

This same shady dealership runs what they call "Repo Joe" sales. Repo Joe is depicted as a jolly fat man in coveralls who happens to own a sh*tload of repossessed cars. Like all jolly fat men who are reputed to give us stuff, Joe is mythical.

The Repo Joe television ads show a line of car-carrier trucks screaming down the interstate bringing great repossessed vehicles to a dealership near you. They can be had for next to nothing because they are repos, and we all know you can get a repo cheap. Except that you generally can't. Repos are mostly sold at auction, to dealers. You can buy a repo from a bank or credit union, but they are not great deals, because the bank wants to get its money back, not let you have it.

Besides, Repo Joe is not a person or even a car selling business, it is a marketing firm. They are contracted by dealerships to come in and sell the dealer's used car inventory by pretending that they are repos. You can go to RepoJoe.com for proof. Read it carefully and you will see what I mean. The shocking fact is that Repo Joe doesn't travel the country with a fleet of car carriers. The RepoJoe outfit provides a bunch of advertising and marketing materials.

Anyway, that is my rant for today. By the way, today was t-minus 4 days and counting, if you are keeping track at home.

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Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor