Karma Cleanser - July 29 2004
?Dear Karma Cleanser: My girlfriend and I have a close friend, Cody, who has just graduated from real estate school. We are happy for him, because he has been in a dead-end accounting job for a long time and was not very happy. Except now Cody keeps trying to sell us a house.
His attempts to get us to go look at properties were endearing at first. We looked at two properties with him, but were not very impressed. He’s still working on us, and it’s getting on my nerves. What’s worse, now that he’s planted the idea in my girlfriend’s head, she won’t leave me alone about why we can’t buy a house together.
We’ve only been dating a year and I don’t know that I’m ready to have a mortgage. Maybe not now, maybe not ever. Can I tell Cody to kiss off and still keep my karma in good standing? What’s the best exit strategy?-- Renter for Life
The Karma Cleanser can relate. A friend of ours also recently became a certified Realtor (a process, we suspect, that required a blood sacrifice and ceding beachfront property to Satan). Since his transition, he’s been relentless with his sales pitches. Our strategy: We simply went to see every property he hyped. Soon enough he gave up on us. Your situation, however, indicates a deeper issue: uncertainty over your relationship and possible commitment fears. We’re reminded of the words of the great 21st-century philosopher/poet Dido, who wrote: “If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy/Well I deserve nothing more than I get/Cos’ nothing I have is truly mine.” Amen, sister.
br>?Dear Karma Cleanser: I just saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and I can’t settle on how I feel about it. I think that if half of what Michael Moore put on screen is really accurate, then the U.S. is going to have a tremendous karmic debt to pay over the atrocities in Iraq. But I also felt manipulated by the film and sometimes think that the director’s smug voiceovers obscured the truth.
Can a whole country have to pay back bad karma over the errors of its leaders? And if the film is not true, shouldn’t the filmmaker be held accountable?-- Less is Moore
Yes, a country must sometimes pay for the sins of its leaders (case in point: post-WWII Germany). We think that films like Moore’s help to rouse the snoozing masses, making them realize that what’s on cable news isn’t always the whole story. Whether you agree with Moore’s politics or not, we’d like to think that gadflies like him get a karmic pass just for stirring up debate.
Been bad? karma@creativeloafing.com.