In these times of economic uncertainty, there are many
difficult choices facing you and your family. Should you invest your money
in stocks and hope that a rebound will compound your investment, or should
you stick with safe savings accounts? Would it be better to get a new car
now, while 0% financing rules the roost, or to wait until you're more sure
of your own financial position? In this light, we here at the Jux Entente
have decided to bring our formidable knowledge of the fiscal world to bear
to guide you through one of the toughest of these problems: That of cereal
and knees. Realistically, it's impossible for the average middle class family
to currently afford both. But you all know the issues of price by now, so
let's look at the products themselves.
Travel
It's a well known fact that knees are one of the perennial "comfort travel"
inventions. Strictly speaking, they are not required for your trip, but they
certainly make things easier. This places it in the same category as automobile
air conditioning and jet fuel. And, much like those previous products, most
of us have had knees around for as long as we can remember. Your family probably
already had knees when you were born. But they are still a luxury item, so
when it's time to balance the family's budget, try to restrain yourself when
you feel like crying out "I can't go anywhere without knees!" As true as it
may feel, it's just not so. Look at stilt walkers.
Food
When was the last time you didn't have a box of some sort of dried breakfast
confection in the house? Who didn't grow up with Raisin Bran, Trix,
and Nintendo cereal? The use of cereal as a travel food is just as perennial
as its breakfast connotations, so it could almost fit into the category above.
The truth of the matter is that by now most of the people in your house eating
the expensive cereals are your children. It would seem a simple matter to
placate them with other breakfast foods, such as waffles, fresh fruit, english
muffins and pot roast, but we all know how hard it is to deny our children
anything. Cutting this out of your budget won't be as easy as you thought.
Investment
Strictly speaking, knees hold their value better than cereal. A good set
of knees can last for decades, but even the best cereal is going to do go
stale and become almost worthless as anything but packing material in just
a few short months. An upshot to this is that the cereals market is much cheaper
to enter, since individual unit prices are almost nonexistent. If you hear
about General Mills going under, raid the store: you'll be sitting on vaguely
brown gold! Knees will never get you nearly the same possibility of
return on investment, but are a much safer market overall. It's rare for a
knee to appreciate in value, but the same applies to cars, and look how fast
people buy those things!
Harmony
Cereal can be used to make a variety of shaken musical instruments, but
most of them require additional monetary input. Nothing is require for you
to make interesting sounds with a set of knees, though, so they carry this
category.
Overall
Sadly, the picture is still not clear. Both of our products have definite
advantages. So let's put it this way: if you have children, or are a child
yourself, and you have any idea of what social etiquette is about, stick with
cereal. If you're not in the family way, nothing looks sexier on a single
person than a good looking pair of knees.