The Way We Live Now: Forced into a life of crime. The System doesn't want us to go straight. Madoff's scam barely even hurt anyone. Spectacular helicopter heists get all the attention. Meanwhile, our big beet business plan gets torpedoed!

Prosecutors did some "math" and now they say that a huge chunk of the investors in the Madoff scheme actually broke even, or better! What do they think this does when children hear it? It's really simple, how a child's mind works: "Oh Bernie Madoff stole $50 billion and people didn't even get hurt except by identity theft, of all things, so why don't I just steal my way to success, too?"

Hard to tell the kids they're wrong. Turn on the news these days and what do you see? A daring band of Swedish thieves swooping down on the roof of a cash depot in a helicopter and making off with millions after blowing shit up, spectacularly. And then you, the parents, are supposed to convince them to stay in school and learn about computers or maybe accounting even when they know that you like the movie Heat, which has stunning similarities to this awesome crime?

It's just not realistic. We live in this world of awesome criminals and broke adults who sit at home weeping into their empty wallets because a federal judge shot down their plan to sell genetically modified sugar beets, which could be a really good item.

And there they go, your kids, running off to protest the G-20 because dad's just a poor washed-up beet farmer without a sugar dollar to his name, unlike some Swedish master criminals we could name. We can only hope that they find Jesus at a truck stop. As well as spare change, on the ground of that truck stop.