The Misery Index is the economic measure of the economic distress which takes into consideration the unemployment in relation to inflation. The Misery Score is the tabulated tax burden which the citizens of a given country bear. Forbes, in its glossy-magazine-wisdom has taken data from “Cities Ranked & Rated” (Bert Sperling, 2007) and Moody’s to crunch figures on the top 150 metropolitan cities. Based upon crime, commute times, taxes, unemployment, and… weather – Detroit came out as the most miserable.

The story without giving advertising money to the Forbes Empire here [link]

I would like to extend my gratitude to Forbes Magazine and Forbes.com for making my city and state more attractive to new industries and businesses.

We here in Detroit, invite you to come visit us for our stunning crime and violent crime. Those of us who have jobs in the service industry commute from far and wide to meet your needs at an attractive (albeit taxed to the eyeballs) price. Forbes rated us the most miserable city in the country, so stop in and gawk! Sorry we can’t do anything about the terrible weather, we can’t move the jet-stream or the lakes. However, our high foreclosure rate means low low prices! What you save on a new home can go into the ever increasing cost to heat and cool your home, say “bah” to the weather!

In my spiteful-blogging-wisdom, I am now replacing the adjective miserable with the word Forbes.

Since an unknown sample of people admitted that Miss America lacks relevance and popularity, the good folks at TLC brought together the an advisory panel of style-makers to revamp the American institution of the beauty pageant [link]. Following in the “oh-so-modern” the reality show format, we get a perfectly edited perfectly biased showcase of how this contest is new and exciting. Though I only caught this show using my DVR’s cache, here are a few things that I learned from the Miss America Reality Show.

1) US Weekly is the embodiment of the perfect American person. US Weekly the celebrity magazine gives us helpful day-to-day tips in their sections “Just Like Us: photos of celebrities doing things everyday people do” and “The Record: a roster of changes in the lives of stars — births, marriages, divorces, etc.” As one of the panelists for the show Dina Sansing, an editor at US weekly, helps the ladies out with tips on make pageants modern by “glamming it up” and walking more “red carpet” instead of “a stiff pageant walk”.

2) Everyone needs to dress like a celebrity and drop names of celebrities. I personally don’t have a stylist, but I’ve learned  it’s important to have a stylist with neck and shoulder tattoos like another one of the members of the TLC advisory panel, Jeanie Mae. If you don’t know what celebrities wore the labels that are currently on your back, get yourself a celebrity gossip magazine and head towards the mall.

3) Try to get a good sound-bite. Wait for a camera crew to sneak in your room… then pour your heart out about a personal trauma. Hopefully, that camera crew will add sound, personal photos, and perhaps a black-and-white reenactment of the trauma. Take this video reel to job interviews, dating services, or the parole board.

Thank you Miss America Organization [link], you really know how to make the near perfect Miss.

Did you see? The North American International Auto Show is going on in COBO Center in Detroit? Yeah..

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, has been found exchanging text messages with a top office aide landing him into hot water [link]. Scandal makers are taking the text and claiming perjury concerning an illicit affair. An affair that he denied having in a whistle-blower trial that cost the city millions of dollars.

The trial pitted the Detroit cops against the City of Detroit in a “he was having an affair on the public dime” v. “what affair?” pissing match. This left cops (save for the chief of police and the mayor’s personal security detail who weren’t going to tattle) reeling over the untouchable/unconscionable actions of the mayor. On top of the allegations of spending tax dollars on an SUV for the wife and an ‘exotic dancer’ mysteriously found dead in an adjacent town after the mayor’s wife crashed a party in the mayor’s mansion; things aren’t looking too good for our fair city.

I don’t live or work in the city. I live two blocks away and work twenty miles away so my taxes aren’t funding these shenanigans. I write about this because this is a high visibility time for Detroit. Whoever decided to break this story did it after the world press left the auto show and the presidential primary but there is still enough buzz in the air that the scope of this story could travel past the city limits. Enough people discount this city already, we need the Associated Press to validate it?

I understand the city residents are unhappy… just ask the mayor’s wife, but given the country is in a month long economic downturn and our state’s flailing manufacturing sector we don’t need this scandalmongering. Great – our mayor is a dog, we need companies and people to come into Detroit, people need to go see the lovely DOMESTIC cars at the North AMERICAN International Auto show [link]. Move on people, there’s nothing to see here but the shiny new cars.

As the keeper of our households finances, I was making sure that our accounts were reaping all the benefits one receives from not paying cash. Borne out of the interest and fees collected from those in debt, I revel in what I can get back from credit cards. I genuinely feel bad for those who are tied down by debt, but I’m equally as angry at the credit card industry and their shenanigans to capitalize on our weakness to consume and procrastinate.

I’ve been earning and spending points for years, but Snuff has been missing out on that fraction of dollar until I signed him up. With all the incidental purchasing that he does I thought I would have some gifts coming my way in no time until I saw the hard figures.

	Visa WorldPoints	Visa Extras	AMEX Rewards
Apple iPod Classic 80GB	39,200 Points	177,500 Points	42,000 Points
Sony® Bravia™ Home Theater System	41,600 Points	186,500 Points	53,998 Points
Cash Back	scaled from .5 to 1% 2500 Points = $12.50 350000 Points = $350	set rate of .2% 2000 points = $4	set rate of .5% 20,000 points = $100