Read Part 2. (Thank you Alan)
Archive for October, 2008
Things From Other People
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
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Babes In Toyland
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008Some stories get their humor from a punch line, and some of them are funny just because of the situation. This is one of those situational ones.
My friend, who I’ll call Josephine, is a really great person. She’s generous, kind, intelligent, adventurous, interesting, and isn’t afraid to act silly once in a while.
Oh, and she’s extremely liberal. Keep this in mind as we proceed.
A few years ago, I made the mistake of dragging Josephine into one of the local adult toyshops for shits and giggles. After wandering around and joking about the displays, I finally realized that while I was just being an immature idiot, Josephine was truly embarrassed. I was confused; this is a woman who’s been living in the gay district of an extremely liberal city for over ten years. What’s the problem? And that’s when it dawned on me that even ultra-tolerant, ultra-liberal people have comfort zones, and I’d shoved Josephine out of hers. I immediately felt bad for putting her in such an uncomfortable situation, so we left and never spoke of it again.
About a month later, Josephine came over and made an announcement. Namely, she had decided that it was time to get her first vibrator. And she wants me to come. This normally wouldn’t have bothered me, except it was less “I want to get a vibrator, and won’t it be fun for you to tag along,” and more “I am a fifty-two year old woman on her way to buying her very first vibrator, and there must be an experienced woman to witness this modern Rite of Passage.”
I guess in her mind, having the same BOB for a decade makes me the expert on all things that whir and jiggle, thus qualifying me for the position of “experienced woman.”
Now, the adult toyshop we went into before was one of those little boutiques designed to make people feel comfortable about getting off, turning their kink into a Lifestyle Choice. In other words, the perfect place to take someone who’s not been all that sexually adventurous.
Apparently Josephine’s desire to liberate herself from the prison of sexual conservatism didn’t overcome her need to price-shop, because she wanted to go to the other adult toyshop. The one with not just a wall of dildos, but a wall and three aisles. And massive bins of porn with titles like “Virgin Brides IV” just thrown all together. And an entire selection of lingerie that was in style back when beach balls were considered erotic.
You know, the skeevy one.
I, the “experienced woman,” am desperately trying to ignore the pasty-faced clerks quivering in fear and excitement at the prospect of not one, but two real women being within ten feet of them. Meanwhile, Josephine, the inferred “inexperienced woman,” is bouncing around the store, loudly asking me things like why the DVDs are so expensive (“Um, they don’t exactly make their production costs back in ticket sales.” “Oh, yeah. I can see that.”)
And then I’m staring at the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen: The Rabbit Vibrator.
And it’s speaking to me.
“Look at me! ” it says. “I’m so much better than that tired old thing you’ve been using for ten years. I’ve got more buttons than a universal remote. Push one, and watch me dance and sing! My shaft is double-jointed, with pretty shiny beads that run all through it. I have a clitoris stimulator in the shape of an adorable little bunny. And, I come in a wide array of colors perfect for matching your bedspread.
You want me. I know you do. Buy me. Buy me, and you’ll never have to cruise bars looking for Mr. Right again, because I have been so skillfully engineered for your pleasure that I will RUIN YOU FOR MEN FOREVER. And then, World Domination!”
And Josephine is waving this thing under my nose, asking me if I think she should buy it.
“I dunno,” I reply, visions of Sinfest’s “The Matriarchy”
“Hm. The floor model’s not working. I think the batteries are dead.”
“It’s a vibrator, Josephine. I’m sure it’s fine.”
“But I want to see if the action’s smooth.”
Josephine heads over to the service desk, where, like the competent professionals they look nothing like, the staff have batteries lying around for just such an occasion. After playing with the Devil’s Prosthesis for a few minutes, Josephine decides it’s perfect and buys it.
Five seconds later, we’re out the door and on our way home. She holds her head high, proud to have completely joined the ranks of the Modern Woman. I, on the other hand, am dragging my feet in shame, my head hanging. Apparently, I am not as ultra-tolerant, ultra-liberal as I thought. I have shamed my fellow women. The terrorists have won.
For five minutes.
I shrugged off my embarrassment and went back to work. Now, every time I think about my reaction to vibrator-shopping with Josephine, I giggle like an idiot at my own hypocrisy.
Except when I think about The Rabbit. Then I flinch.
Skippy Solves The Financial Crisis
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008Now that I am sober I have given some thought to my idea for fixing the bailout issue that our country is currently facing.
In perhaps overly-simplistic terms, people are afraid that if our financial institutions do not get access to liquid capital they will fold, which could take a large chunk of the economy down with it, triggering a new Great Depression.
But if our government hands over a big wad of cash to these troubled institutions, then we are in essence condoning the shortsighted greed of the men who created the problems in the first place. Hell we’d be rewarding it. At the cost of massive tax increases and/or a huge spike in the deficit. And spending money that wasn’t there is how we got into this mess in the first place.
And so I have come up with what I will now call “The Skippy Plan”.
Step One: Identify every financial institution that took part in the shady real-estate loan business that got us into this mess.
Step Two: Commandeer a skyscraper. One that is basically all window across every exterior surface. Remove all non-load bearing walls from the interior of the skyscraper. This essentially makes it a big tall building that you can see through.
Step Three: Stock the building with every piece of kitchen equipment you can think of, but nothing edible.
Step Four: Arrest every board member and corporate officer from Step One. Arrest every board member and corporate officer that served during the real estate bubble. Arrest all lobbyists that worked for these companies during that time period as well.
Step Five: Dress them as clowns. Because if you are foolish enough to play thermonuclear hot potato with the US economy, you are going to look the part dammit.
Use the different types of make-up, costumes and accessories to mark which bank the clown belongs too. For instance bankers associated with Fannie May could look like sad hobo clowns, while those with Freddy Mac could be dressed in motley.
Step Six: Lock all of them inside the the newly remolded “Economic Summit Gulag”. Nobody leaves until we have a workable solution to bail out the economy. No matter how long it takes. And they can’t use public money to do it. But they are more than welcome to dip into their own savings if the are overcome with community spirit.
To encourage them to really set aside their differences, and apply themselves as never before, every 12 hours that passes without a solution will result in a culling.
During the culls American citizens who are willing to do their part to help fix the economy will set up in buildings adjacent to the Gulag and open fire on the investment geniuses inside.
After a few days of dodging sniper fire and having nothing to eat but investment banker tartar I’m sure that the finest minds in finance will be suitably inspired to find a solution to the mess they made.
And just to make sure that we have all of our bases covered, we can turn this into a money-making venture at the same time. I mean, it’s entirely possible that they broke things too much to fix on their own. In that case we might need a way to raise $700 billion fast.
The membership in the incentive squads could be made dependent upon a modest tax-deductible donation to the economic recovery fund. We could let citizens at home call a 900 number to vote on which set of clowns will be considered valid targets. We could set up cameras inside and sell the feed as pay-per-view. I’m sure that the production companies behind the current glut of reality TV could come up with a way to turn this into a gold mine. We could even get some corporate sponsorship involved here: “This culling of Bear Stearns executives is brought to you by ‘Build-a-Bear’.”
And no matter how it turns out we should mount the remains of the partially devoured clowns onto pikes, and place them on the campuses of prominent MBA programs with a placard that reads “Behold the terrible price of fiduciary misconduct!”
We just might end up with a few less clowns recking our economy.
