Archive for the ‘Skippy is going to hell’ Category

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.

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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.

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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.”

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So, I have one of the coolest web hosts on the planet. Long-time readers may remember what happened last year when my site got nailed by Digg. She does a really great job making sure everyone can read my opinions on video games, military leadership, and vampire survival. Which is great because I feel that the whole world is entitled to my opinions, and you will all thank me when the vampires come for you. (Oh yes, you will.)

Well not only does Jen do a superb job in letting all of you read the babble that spills out of my brain, she also finds to time to work with charities. Not only is she working with a charity, but she picked the first recipient for her help in honor of me. This is great for two reasons. One, she’s helping to feed my ego. Which is pretty close to the most wonderful thing a person can do. (Sing my praises! SING, DAMN YOU!) Also, by honoring me in this way she pretty much obligates me to write about it, which should hopefully drive some attention to her cause. Which just goes to show that she is exactly the kind of smart and canny individual that you want helping your charity. Or being your web host for that matter.

Here’s another fun fact about Jen. Last August she and her son Jacob got to meet Stephen Colbert. And there is an interesting story there.

Jacob has a fairly serious problem with his heart. He has needed multiple surgeries and tons of other kinds of medical treatment. One of the few silver linings of cases like this is that he got to make use of the Make-A-Wish foundation. And through the two of them I got to learn a few things about how it works.

First of all, I learned that George Lucas will not meet with Make-A-Wish kids. He will let them go to Skywalker Ranch. But he won’t meet them. This puzzled me until I thought about it. If I had mangled a beloved science fiction franchise as badly as he had, I might be leery about letting a nerd with a life threatening illness near me. Some kid is going to show up with a dynamite vest screaming, "This is for Jar-Jar you bastard!"

So Jacob decided to meet with a classy celebrity. And thus he got to go visit the Colbert Report. He got to hang out backstage, meet Stephen. His mother even mentioned to my wife and me that they hung out with a journalist who was a guest on the show that day. I didn’t think much of that until I watched that episode later. It turns out the journalist was Tom Ricks. (And this was not long after that incident.)

And I mourned a lost opportunity. I could have gotten Jacob to give him grief. Jacob would make the perfect agent to antagonize Tom. No matter what he said, Mr. Ricks would have to take it. I mean, who’s going to be mean to a Make-A-Wish kid? It would have been awesome.

Of course, it has been pointed out that it would be really messed up to try to subvert some kids special Wish-Day into an attempt for petty revenge for a minor disagreement. "Now jacob, I know that this is your special day and all, but I need you to be mean to the reporter, can you do that for me buddy?" Yeah I’m a horrible person. But I’m funny, so it’s all okay.

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Before I get into the second part there is a pertinent fact that bears mentioning. SGT Generic is a black woman.

Because I’m white, ed I am now obligated to spend a paragraph or so defending myself.

I don’t hate black people; I don’t think all black people are stupid. I have black friends, and coworkers. I understand that as someone who has light colored skin it is frowned upon for me to ever mention someone who is darker than me and any form of negative description. I am deeply and personally sorry for every single bad thing to ever happen to any person who happened to have more melanin than me.

Have I spent enough time on this to avoid racist accusations in the comments section? Probably not, but let’s move on anyways.

About a week after Part One happened we saw another story on CNN, this time about gay marriage.

She felt that it was sad and wrong that gay people want to get married. This in and of itself wouldn’t be noteworthy. Many people these days have the same opinion as she does. The noteworthy part is coming.

Being the way that I am, instead of just ignoring her comments, I asked if she really felt okay with the government telling people who they can or can’t marry. I pointed out that in our parent’s generation interracial marriage was illegal, and people gave pretty much the same reasons to justify that piece of discrimination as they give nowadays to prevent gay marriage.

She conceded that taking away people rights seemed wrong, but that she still thought gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

“Marriage is too special” she said. “They should make some other kind of thing that works like marriage for gay people.”

“So they should be treated equally, just kept apart?”

“Right.”

“So would you say ‘Separate But Equal’ is the policy our country should adopt?”

“Yeah ‘Separate But Equal’ is exactly how our country should opera—“

“NO!” Bellowed a very large, ticked off black Staff Sergeant who had been listening to our conversation.

YOU!” He said pointing at me, “You should be very ashamed of yourself. SGT Generic, please step outside.” And off they went, presumably for a crash course in the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

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I’m probably going to hell.

The other day at work we were talking about the Supreme Court ruling governing the execution of the retarded. The general belief was that retarded people didn’t understand why they were being executed. And thus killing them was unfair.

I have slightly different take on the subject.

I think stupid is a very poor defense, sale cialis especially in a capital crime situation. And in this case, the argument seems to be “But they’re too stupid to understand that it’s wrong to kill people.”

To me, that does not seem like a particularly compelling argument to keep someone around. Where to order Tramadol in USA, this page http://marziniclinic.com/tramadol-pain/ provides reliable Ultram suppliers.

When I expressed this to my co-workers, I received some shocked expressions. One of them said “Don’t you think that executing someone who doesn’t understand why is cruel?”

Well it doesn’t have to be. It could actually be far less cruel than a regular execution. Just go to their cell, pop a mouse ear hat on their head, and tell them they’re going to Disney Land.

“Dih-Nee-Lan!” He’ll exclaim as he is lead down the hall to the gas chamber. (I’m imagining he sounds like Adam Sandler from ‘Bulletproof’)

“Dih-Nee-Lan!” As he’s strapped down.

“Dih-Nee-Lan!” As gas starts to fill the room.

“Dih-Nee-*!” As he asphyxiates.

Yeah I’m going to hell for that.

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