Vote clousems for president!
With the democratic primaries under way, I think that I should run for president, because everyone else running for president on a party ticket is stupid (disclaimer: I haven't actually looked to see who the Constitution or Green party are backing, but it's probably safe to assume that they are also stupid). I'd be running independent. Here's my platform:
-Standing during the National Anthem: Everyone will be required to stand to our nation's new anthem, "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi. This will replace the Star Spangled Banner, which is set to the tune of a British drinking song, and nobody knows the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner anyways, except for the first verse.
-Abortion, LGBTQ issues, AIDS, aides, proper spelling of potatoes/potatos/potati, other highly controversial issues: Dear [insert name of a secular deity], I ain't touching any of these issues. My VP can deal with that crap. Besides, I plan on finding a running mate nobody likes anyways, so I don't get assassinated. Does anyone have Spiro Agnew's number?
-Economy: I plan on going full-out Quesnay. Nobody has tried Physiocracy in a while. Might be fun. If that doesn't work, just go 100 percent laissez faire, because that means I have more free time, while appeasing the libertarians.
-Foreign Policy: I have a plan for world domination involving war penguins. It's gonna take everyone by surprise.
-National Defense: Build a giant Vauban-esque fortress encompassing the continental United States. Should stimulate the economy as well.
-Immigration: If anyone manages to get through the aforementioned Vauban-esque fortress, then they've probably earned the right to be citizens. As well as the right to go to an insane asylum, because that would be crazy.
-US Flag: Like the national anthem, kind of outdated. We need something that shows how bad-ass the united states is. Like a grizzly bear in an M1A2 wearing Aviator sunglasses. Product placement may be used to reduce the national debt.
-National Debt: In addition to the flag, I would be willing to sell California, Wyoming, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Al Gore, and the Kardashians. I feel like we could make some serious money.
Let's just take a moment to realize how hilarious the Bane character is in that new superhero tv show.
How to identify true evil:
If movies, literature, and various religions are to be believed, evil surrounds us at all times. I'm not sure why we, as a society, insist on shaming evil, but I have discovered a method of identification of badness, based off of a mathematical theorem I devised, the Evil Villain Identification Lemma (or EVIL, for short):
Evil Quotient = Moral Questionability * Good Fashion Choices^2, or, in shorthand notation, E=MC^2 (complete coincidence)
You may be thinking to yourselves "why does fashion have more to do with determining one's existential status than Moral Questionability?" Hear me out on this. When was the last time a guy wearing stripes with plaid tried to kill James Bond? Exactly never. What about the last time you saw a fascist special policeman wearing sweatpants to work? Also never. Clearly, villains are blessed with an impeccable sense of fashion.
Taking the first derivative of the Evil quotient gives us:
E'=2C
From this, we determine that anyone with positive fashion choices must be positively evil in the first degree.
For many decades my wife has flamed me (publicly and privately) for what she describes as my "deplorable lack of sartorial style ".My technique for garb selection is to find my size and buy it.Cut,colour and degree of panache do not enter the equation.
This break-thru research will validate the millions of otherwise socially-acceptable (ish) adult males who share my "this one will do" approach to one of life's basic necessities.
Additionally, my surplus stocks of nerdy "E=MC^2" Tee shirts can legitimately now be wheeled out and re-purposed as "look at me..I am not a villain" slogan-apparel.
I'm now so overcome with joy and self-justification that I will don something outlandishly style-free and drink beer. With a bit of luck I might even slop some all down the front of myself..thus reinforcing my newly liberated goodness.
note to OP-- #65 + #66 really need to launched into the public domain..via General Chat, maybe.
How to keep oneself entertained during Coronarmageddeon:
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So, apparently, my University and the DC metropolitan areas are inhabited by cowards who are afraid of getting sick with some disease that's only slightly deadly. These nerds have cancelled pretty much everything. Unfortunately, they also cancelled the NBA season and March Madness, so I can't sit around watching basketball to kill my now abundant time.
With that in mind, I offer the following tips for avoiding losing ones mind:
1. Be overly pedantic
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Everyone knows I am overly pedantic, but it keeps the mind sharp. Lately, I have been reading various articles published at McSweeney's Internet Tendency and constructing various economic models to disprove them. It is an incredibly satisfying mental exercise.
2. Find movies on youtube
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Sometimes, people post movies on youtube just to break the law (apparently, lawbreaking is cathartic, although I do not endorse it, what with my vigilantism). You can have scavenger hunts with these.
3. Political discussions in the lichess off-topic sections:
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A good way to kill some time and IQ points.
4. Horde toiletpaper to establish your dominance over the plebians
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For some reason, people always buy TP when crisis hits. It's an unwritten law of the universe. If you can get to the TP first, you can presumably leverage your access to such an essential good into local domination.
On toilet paper and its mystical brainwashing properties:
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In my last rant, I mentioned that TP is correlated to crises. But today, I went to the store, and I noticed that there was absolutely no toilet paper. It was before noon. The store had been stocked the night before. This begs the question: why?
Now, as I am sure you all know, considering I mention it in every third post, I have a fairly solid background in economics. I am literally trained to be able to explain why an event leads to a certain good or service's demand changing (and yes, the training did involve a rolled up newspaper and biscuits). I can graphically demonstrate why people, when faced with uncertainty, might go to stores en masse to stock up on essential goods. Heck, I can do the same for non-essential goods.
And yet, I have no idea why the focaccia toilet paper is the good everyone is worried about during any given emergency.
The only situations in which hoarding TP makes sense are:
a) the whole toilet paper industry falls as a result of whatever disaster has happened
b) coronavirus decides to start a timeshare with dysentery in infected cells.
Since I'm pretty sure that b is impossible, let's look at a. I struggle to think of any situation where toilet paper manufacture ceases, outside of an apocalypse (presumably zombie). And if an apocalypse DID happen, comfort would seem to be the least of an individual's worries.
I am therefore left to conclude that toilet paper has some property which brainwashes shoppers into purchasing it. And since it would be costly to use subliminal soundwaves in toiletpaper, I assume the nature of the brainwashing is mystical.
In order to test my hypothesis, I will be sneaking into Charmin's headquarters and asking if anyone knows where Merlin is. While I'm there, I may steal some product; my local market seems to have run out.
Update: I have decided to follow the Fed's example and become slightly active for the first time since 2010. I will be doing this by correcting various economic fallacies I see on lichess. If you don't like it, blame the virus for closing down everything remotely entertaining.
Questions, Volume 1
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With everybody seeking answers these days, I decided that I should continue my long streak of not being remotely useful to society by providing a list of 10 questions*:
1) Do nihilistic treehuggers exist?
2) Whatever happened to Triumph, the Insult Dog?
3) Is Yoda a Muppet?
4) How many Tootsie-pops are being purchased at this very moment?
5) Is ukelele tablature the same as guitar tablature?
6) Why, for the love of all that is holy, was Stan against Evil cancelled?
7) Does the National Rifle Association discriminate against owners of muskets? What about blunderbusses? Why are they marginalizing smoothbores?
8) Is Christian Slater still alive?
9) Do doomsday prophets collude? It seems like they all have the same message. Also, how do they afford their signs?
10) Why is William Shakespere more famous than Ben Johnson?
*Note: There are actually more than ten questions in this list.
5) No
8) Yes
rest i have no idea.
Frank Drebin is my hero
