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Let me start by saying that I like dogs. I'll probably own a dog some day. They're great fun.

Having said that I want to talk about the idol worship of dogs that our culture is stuck on. It seems that the animal rights activists agendas are becoming more and more main-stream. When football player 'X' decided to make dogs fight eachother and then kill them anyway, people got mad. That seems about right. What he did was wrong, no doubt about it. But the nation has gone way over the top on this. I recall seeing a congressman or senator talking about how heinous he was and how he was going to end up in the most inner circle of hell. Last I checked, dogfighting wasn't the unpardonable sin. That would be jaywalking. But still we have politicians and celebrities freaking out over the cruel deaths of these dogs that Mr. V decided to... kill cruelly.

A local tie would be the initiative (thankfully ignored by the Utah congress) to make "Animal Torture" a felony. Animal torture? Is Jack Bauer trying to get information out of these dogs? No, It's played up terminology to get peoples emotions involved. Cruelty works fine. I said that the initiative was thankfully ignored because this is stupid. Putting a dog in the oven and then chasing it around with a leaf blower would have a higher possible sentence than assaulting a police officer, child abuse, and negligent homicide Where are our priorities? On those who protect us? No, it's on our pets.

Unfortunately, there is an opposite side to the spectrum. A crazy old woman willed her dog 12 million dollars. TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS!!! What the **** is a dog going to do with 12 million dollars?!? Okay, fine. 12 million dollars isn't that much to a crazy old billionaire. But to most of the rest of us, it's kinda significant. That is more money than I will make in my lifetime, and a dog gets it for being cute. Give me an hour to think and I could come up with 100 better ways to spend that money. You could make a lot of people happy just by giving the money away. You could make 12000 people very happy by giving them a thousand dollars. Or 120 VERY happy by giving them $100,000. You could invest it all and use the interest to give scholarships. Heck, name the endowment after the dog! "I recived the fluffy scholarship for just being me". You could, I don't know, buy Tuberculosis medication and send it to Africa. But NO! Your precious DOG gets fillet mignon 10 times a day, and a private limo!

When did animals become so danged important? It's just an animal. Like a cow. We eat cows. They are delicious. Why don't we eat dogs? I hear from a very reliable source that they taste like pork, but sweeter. That sounds very delightful. But no, we worship dogs. Then again, Hindus worship cows, but then again most Americans look at them like they're crazy (don't pretend like you don't).

This will be a a very dull blog for... everyone. But I thought I would sound the alarm. I have been trying to refinance my auto loan for 2 reasons. 1- Drop my cosigner. 2- Get a lower interest rate. Well, today I found out it's not going to be as simple as once thought. My credit isn't good enough for me to get a lower rate. I don't have bad credit, but I still have relatively unestablished credit (I'm only 20 after all). So, no refinance for me. But I learned a few things that can improve your score from the nice guy at America First Credit Union.

First, my credit card. I made sure to have a low credit limit so I couldn't get in over my head. My balance regularly gets up to the limit and is paid off in one payment. This isn't good. If you want a high credit score, keep your balance around 10% of your limit... not 80%. The guy said it was about 1/3 of my score.

Second, have more credit. I thought it was bad to have several lines of revolving credit. Apparently, as long as the balance is low, it's beneficial to have several lines of credit. Thus I added another credit card and something else. They both have low limits, but they're just for show.

Then there's the obvious (which I didn't learn today. In fact I have been perfect about). Make your payments on time! If you can't make 100% of your payments on time, you're in too much debt. Some would argue that if you have payments at all you're in too much debt.

So there we have it. A word from the un-wise involving establishing good credit.

EDIT: Be sure to check out Matthew's comment below. It's better than my entry. That is all.