American Express hates poor people

When I got my new tires at NTB, the guy talked me into getting a lot of other work done and putting it on an NTB card, which was 90 days same as cash. Part of the promotion was they send you a 50$ prepaid gift card. Which is nice, except when it comes in the mail 9 weeks later and turns out to be an American Express card.

Which you can't use at a gas station.
Can't use at the grocery store.
Can't use to get coffee at work.

So even though I wanted to be responsible, I was practically forced to use it for frivolous and unnecessary things.

This morning I went to Half Price books with it, and came home with lots of things that don't contribute to my productivity as a citizen.
For instance:

Short Stories - F.Scott Fitzgerald
The Love of the Last Tycoon - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Years Best Science Fiction - 1999
War With the Robots - various authors
Rabbit at Rest - John Updike
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 - Garrison Keillor
A Man In Full - Tom Wolfe
Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
The Prince and Pauper - Mark Twain
Pleasures and Days - Marcel Proust
Royal Poxes and Potions - Raymond Lamont Brown
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower - C S Forester
A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
The Civil War Through the Camera
The Book of the American West

The last two look like gifts for a 12 yr old boy in 1982. Awesome.

Books I will eventually buy from Amazon:
God is Not Great
Survival of Sickness
The Black Swan
Freakonomics
Basically anything featured on the Daily Show since that's all I watch and usually at that time of night everything looks more interesting than my life.

So keep your stupid American Express card, Ms. Kate Winslet, Mr. Robert DeNiro. Visa understands that I don't jet around Europe on a regular and I don't need a 49,000 line of credit to buy vending machine cappuchino.

Its a Red Dawn darlings, but its not the Cubans invading, its Experion.