Money Makes the World Go Round

Money is probably the best source of comedy ever created. I can't help but laugh every time I think about the stuff we spend money on. Why do we pay money, not Monopoly or the Game of Life stuff, real bon-a-fide money, on some of this stuff? College is a perfect example. Americans spend billions a year on alcohol, which is great, the assurance that there are always drunk Americans is the only chance I have at making a career out of being funny. But then you have the Americans between the ages of 18 and 23, we pay money so that we can go to school and pay money to drink. Let's be honest, college is only there to drink. I just don't understand this thought process, though. Is it like; "Tequila costs $20 a bottle, and a six pack is $6 bucks. You know what would make those taste even better? Spending 40 grand a year so that I can spend that $26 bucks a week. I think that's gonna make it taste so much better!"
I think I did the smart thing, though. I joined the military. Instead of paying to pay to drink, I get paid to pay to drink. And the military is the only place I've found where alcoholism is a prerequisites. At first I thought it was something they looked down on. I was really confused why the recruiter was constantly asking me about how often I drank as a 17 year old. I kept telling him none, each time. Eventually he just said, "Look, if you don't tell me you drink a 6 pack a day, we can't take you." The military also pays me to go to school. So I can have them pay for me to pay to drink. It's really a great, win-win situation. Well, other than that whole going to war and dying thing. That might be a slight downside.
We also spend $10 billion a year on porn. And who knows how much we spend on hookers. How does this happen to a society? Not the whole overly perverse thing. I'm totally fine with that. In fact, personally, I think as a whole we are still way too closed sexually. I don't see two people groping each other in public near as much as I would like. My question is how did we become a society so full of World of Warcraft fanatics that have to spend money on this stuff? I mean, I understand that we aren't near as open about sexuality as Europe and South America, but aren't we open enough for everyone to see a little free boob every now and then? I mean it doesn't have to be pretty, the girls they are paying to see sure aren't pretty. I mean the girls they are paying to sleep with are never attractive, and the girls they are paying to WATCH sleep with ANOTHER GUY are even less attractive. I mean they aren't even trying to hide their bruises from shooting up anymore.
We spend a lot of money imagining we could live other lives than the ones we have. If a Senator even breathes the idea of raising taxes for new schools or roads he risks being impeached. But we have no problem spending double what these schools and roads were gonna cost us on DVDs and cable bills. Eventually it will be unreasonable to require someone to have anything higher than a 3rd grade education. And we'll have to ride ATVs to get anywhere, but we'll be able to show off our entire rooms dedicated to our DVD collections, and have 6000 channels we never watch.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm probably more guilty of this than anyone. I spend two years in Japan, but have no oriental anything to show for it. I do, however, have a $6000 DVD collection. You can't tell a girl something like that, though. Any time we talk about having something worth a little bit of money, they assume we are trying to compensate for something. Her thinking that isn't really the problem here. The problem is that it's true.