Trillion Dollar Baby

I haven't been able to blog for a while, seeing as I've been watching every single episode of How I Met Your Mother off of Netflix (ALL PRAISE BE TO NETFLIX, BLESSINGS AND PEACE BE UPON IT), but also because my friend Calvin got hit by a car. He broke a rib and his bike was destroyed, so naturally (being the good friend I am) I stayed by his side until he got better.

Yeah, no... I did call him a couple of times. No, actually... I just texted him. Anyway, school's back, I'm depressed, and I'm trying to forget my troubles by blogging. And DAMN, there's some crazy s**t going on... like you wouldn't believe. This week, the treasury department and both houses of congress have started to seriously consider a wild-- yet fully awesome-- solution to the debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling is a self-imposed limit that the government sets as a maximum amount of spending. If the president or congress wants to spend any more, they need to raise the debt ceiling. Of course, the Republicans don't want to do this, because... let's face it. They're buttholes. But there's a way for Obama to bypass all of that crap and fix the debt ceiling. It's called... THE TRILLION-DOLLAR COIN.



Now, usually I hate any kind of jackassery that results in a loophole getting congress out of DOING ACTUAL WORK... but I fully support this idea. And not JUST because I intend to steal this thing as soon as it's minted. I just think it's FRIGGIN' AWESOME that the federal reserve can just declare something's worth as $1,000,000,000,000.

Here's how it works: The federal reserve puts a limit on how much a coin made of nickel, gold, or copper can be worth--- but they say nothing about PLATINUM. I have been saying this for AGES. At the Olympics, there should be a PLATINUM medal for whoever comes in 0th place. Anyway, I fully support this idea. And again, I do not intend to steal the coin... absolutely not.

But here's something else that's even MORE twisted. Because the fed only puts a cap on the amount of worth a nickel, gold, or copper coin can have, the $1,000,000,000,000 coin can be made of ANYTHING. Marble, dirt, discarded Taco Bell wrappers... as long as the fed officially declares its monetary worth as a trillion dollars, that's what it's worth.

So yes, I'm enjoying this. Also because some say that an episode of The Simpsons thought up this idea first. And WOW, this Blog site doesn't recognize the word 'Simpsons'. That's bad.

Bye!

In Brightest Day and Blackest Friday

I looked out my bedroom window a few days ago and noticed that a few of our neighbors were loading up their Mazda with flat panel TVs. Like, five of them. Intrigued, I decided to go have a closer look. But when I went down to the street, I saw a truck full of DVD players and iPads drive by with two dumb hicks screaming out the windows.

I biked into town, and found the streets deserted. Storefronts were smashed open, cars were left abandoned in the middle of the street, and tents were set up in front of Best Buy. I wondered how long I had been asleep, and if the apocalypse had already happened a few weeks ahead of its planned date in December. But no... then I realized.

It wasn't looting. It was just Black Friday, the day when men and women across America flock to their nearest department stores to bash other people's heads in over some $20 blenders. The day when people spend $300 on a camping tent and George Foreman grill just to wait in line to save $50 on a laptop. The magical time of year when nobody thinks twice about running over an elderly woman's toes with a shopping cart just to get to the 75% off Christmas presents.

 
But in all seriousness, if you went out bargain-hunting on Friday and fought off other greed-crazed holiday shoppers, YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE! You're just celebrating the end of a holiday defined by junk to buy junk for another holiday even MORE defined by junk! This kind of ridiculous s**t is what's wrong with America, and I'm not having any more of it.

On a semi-reputable graph on Memebase, I saw that $60 BILLION was spent on Black Friday. So what if, instead of spending it all on discount salad spinners, electrical strips, and digital converters, we sent it all to one 15-year-old in Marin County?

Sorry, did I say greed was BAD? Bye!