So last week I received an informative email**. The kind of informative email that has been forwarded somewhere around a billion times, contains really big font, and contains almost nothing but lies.

You all know it. Everybody has one or two relatives, or workmates who send you this sort of thing. Well thanks to my website, my address appears in a great many folk’s email applications. And so I get dump-loads of helpful emails on a simply staggering variety of subjects.

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I’ve had some ideas for reality television shows.

It has been pointed out that my ideas are more “elaborate and dangerous practical jokes on innocent people” than television shows. But on the other hand shows like Joe Millionaire and WB’s Superstar USA, and   Scare Tactics seem to indicate that elaborate and dangerous practical jokes are a valid entertainment choice.

My first idea is called “The Haunted Manor”.  A group of standard attention-whore reality show fodder are placed in an actual haunted house.  Last one to quit wins a fabulous and expensive prize.

Naturally the house isn’t actually haunted.  But it will be built, and controlled by a high end special effects studio.  All of the background, history and so on will be elaborately faked.  Given enough lead in time, and enough of a budget a fake special program about haunting could be produced, for the express purpose of convincing people that the house is a real place, with a long documented history.

Once the contestants are inside, it’s just a matter of screwing with them until they start snapping.

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So the Pope has stated that he thinks that condoms do nothing to prevent the spread of AIDS.

I think he may have falsely arrived at this conclusion due to the fact that 9 year old boys are typically not a high risk for infection.

I like history. I’m nowhere near a history buff, but it interests me enough that I take classes in it when I have the opportunity to do so. Anyways, with the recent global political climate, I thought it’d be appropriate to retell a story my professor related to us. It’s pretty easy to take this particular event and apply it to what’s happening today, so yay cyclical history. Forgive me in advance if I don’t have specific names or dates but I do not have a perfect memory.

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I’m not going to pretend that I have even partial justification for my actions.

But it’s amazing what you can get away with when you have a sock puppet.

Now 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.

So the other day me and a coworker went to grab lunch from Panda Express. As we were getting into line he said, “It’s too bad they don’t use real panda.”

Which got me to thinking.

A Panda is a big herbivore with a large amount of body fat.  They would probably taste delicious.

Of course, there are a few ethical issues with eating them, what with them being endangered and all.  Not to mention the whole mess of legal issues that would result.

But then I had another thought.  Cloning.

Science has already managed to successfully clone animals.  Cloned animals do not contribute to the bio-diversity of the species, so eating them shouldn’t cause any issues.  And as I understand it, the big drawback to clones is that due to some protein sequencing thingy in the cells the clone has a much shorter lifespan than the original.  Essentially they only have as much natural lifespan as the original gene-donor had left.  For animals being raised for food this would hardly be an issue.

From an environmental standpoint this could turn out to be a windfall.  A portion of the profits could probably be used to further panda-research and zoo facilities.  From the point of view of a restaurant serving panda, helping to fund them would just be good PR.  So in the long run it could easily be set up to benefit the panda species as a whole.

From a business standpoint I think this is an idea that could really take off.  There’s a certain percentage of people that will want to eat panda, simply because it’s endangered and probably expensive.  Bear in mind that there are people who will pay top dollar for raw poisonous fish, wine made with snakes, and coffee that has been pooped out of a civet.

For the curious, a civet is a small cat-mongoosey kind of critter from Africa that lives in trees, eats roots and berries, and can evidently poop coffee.

And panda could just be the start.  The are entire menus of tasty endangered animals that cloning technology could bring to the table.  You could easily create a venue that is like a cross between a Brazilian steakhouse and a World Wildlife Fund banquet gone horribly horribly awry.

Right in the lobby there could be a tank full of black footed ferrets.  With little rubber bands on their paws.

Now I imagine if such a restaurant was to open, Peta would have a royal cow over it.  Which means that they would protest it.  Which is just free advertising.  Besides, have you ever seen a Peta protest?  They put attractive college coeds, dressed in skimpy animal costumes, into cages.  Surrounding the customers with scantily clad young women rarely hurts a business, and there are several restaurants that make it a central theme to the decor.

Hell, I would advertise the protests just to get more customers to show up.

“Tonight we have Parmesan crusted sea lion rib-eye, dwarf lemur in a Bearnaise sauce, and several angry drama majors with daddy issues dressed as sexy pumas.”