Alas! Gas!

It has been so long since I have put a post on this blog that I don't remember how to write in humoric prose. But that's alright...this isn't about humor - it's about satire. And we all know that satire is a cousin to the grim reaper, Sonic the Hedgehog, Wile E. Coyote and Frank Caliendo (all characters created to make us laugh as a means to soothe the sharp pain in our descending colons at the expense of someone else's descending colon - especially if your name is Charles Barkley). Why? Because I said so and - unlike the retail business - the writer's always write (I mean "right" - that's my acknowledgement to all of my punilicious readers).

No, really...by now you must surely realize that I have lost my blogger touch. Or have I? Either way, that's alright because you're reading this anyway, and I am improving my mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological, physiological, astronomical, gastrological health by taking stress out to the cleaners and leaving him there until I have time to run into the city to pick him up.

And if you are about to stop reading because you believe that reading this post will do nothing to increase your knowledge of Iran's WMD's, you are dead wrong. I'm about to jump into that right now, because we all know that when things are really bad around us - including the poor economy and gas prices and the Cowboy's dismal season and executives spending billions on food and a President-elect who obviously knows as much about the geopolitical playground as the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner - it helps us to feel better when we learn something truly dreadful and life-threatening: in this case the fact that a terrorist is about to have nuclear weapons.

You would think that as butt-kicking awesome as our Navy Seals are, that we would be able to do something about that, such as having perhaps a couple of them walk into Iran with bombs wrapped around their bodies mummy style - which would probably be the best camouflage available for Iran - and walk up to the nuclear sites and actually take off the bombs and run away while the bomb blast behind them can make them dive on the ground like Harrison Ford does in action movies galore.

Or maybe the seals could do something even more awesome, such as steal the real centrifuges and replace them with centrifuges filled with rotten eggs and other foul-smelling gases, which, when Ahmadinejad comes to inspect would blow up in his face and we could maybe have a hidden camera there and broadcast it on Nightly News with Brian Williams and we would all have a good laugh and the Navy Seals would be given medals for the successful covert mission.

But that won't happen because us Americans don't know how to have a good laugh anymore or how to perform practical jokes throughout the geopolitical playground like Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill did. Bummer, because I was just about ready to have a good laugh at gaseous Iran.

The Greatest Show On Earth

And now onto an event more thrilling and breathtaking than the Beijing Olympics, the American election race and Miami's win against the Patriots combined: The 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly General Debate. You may be asking, What is that? But the real question is why doesn't the media show this exciting and exhilarating activity on network television? You would think that the TV stations would be scrambling at the opportunity, but instead they are playing The Price is Right, a game show which has been around for more than 50 years, including a cast of makeup monsters the same age. But that's another subject for another time.

But the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly General Debate (6SUNGAGD for short) is very entertaining. More entertaining, I would say, than a nuclear bomb exploding or a WWF Royal Rumble or an emu running or Obama talking about change, all of which are very exciting to watch.

The 6SUNGAGD party is the who's who of world leaders all getting together and getting their turn to give speeches where they unanimously put down America (read the Great Satan) - who just happens to be the hospitable host nation for the event - while peppering the remainder of their monologue with words such as "peace" and "God" and "unity" and "death to America." Somehow I don't think these words fit together, but then again I'm not the leader of a terrorist sponsoring nation.

Which brings me to my next point: Why doesn't America play along? You get my drift? Every other nation under the sun, including Belize and Monaco, have a lambasting session against the United States, the lone superpower in the world (for now, until Mexico overruns our southern border and takes over all the difficult jobs at the Pentagon, such as cleaning nuclear silos and refueling aircraft carriers, therefore giving them sole power over our military).

And what do our politicians say in response? "My distinguished friends, the United States of America is doing everything within our incredible and mind-boggling power to eradicate terrorism from the face of the Earth, share the peaceful fruits of democracy and disseminate obesity. Join us, my friends, in this mission for mankind's good so we may reap the bountiful harvest of baseball." I am convinced that isn't going anywhere in getting the likes of Chavez and Ahmadinejad to put aside our differences and share breakfast cereals.

I recommend another response: "My idiotic enemies, the United States of America is 250 times more powerful than you. Our great and proud nation challenges anyone who belittles us to a cage fight with one of our ten million Midwestern farm boys who, dare I say, can drive tractors without running into people and lift entire cows with one hand. If you happen to survive that encounter, we will send you to your home country which, by the time you arrive, will be flying the Old Glory atop your presidential palaces, oil refineries and grass huts. We will teach your people to speak English and eat beef. If you feel you have been wronged, we will challenge your strongest men to an American football game, during which our players will rip out your players' kidneys at every down. Did I mention we won't share our breakfast cereals with you?" I believe this would have a much more effective effect on America's enemies. And that would also be the makings of The Greatest Show on Earth.

Of Pigs and Pecuniary Pride

Today we are going to talk about economics. Not because I want to. No - I hate economics. It was my worst subject in school. Here's why.

Economics should be one of the simplest subjects at school (along with P.E. and lunch), but it isn't because it's peppered with impossible-to-comprehend terms which obviously were invented by economists: wild-eyed and fuzzy-haired number-crunchers who couldn't get a job as an accountant or auditor, and therefore - in their angry-at-all-the-world rage - invented their own language to create the impression that they were smart and confuse us humble bread-winners into unanimous awe at their supposed incredible wisdom.

Seriously. Which one of you knows what X-inefficiency means? Or Countercyclical Fiscal Policy? Or Pareto Optimal Policy? Or what is the Law of Diminishing Marginal Rate of Substitution? Do you really care? Or are you an economist? I didn't think so. (For all those curious readers and Trivial Pursuit fans, I will display the definitions at the bottom of this article.)

But let's stop harping on the economists. We all know that they do a great job trying to lie to us about how great the economy is doing on Nightly News with Brian Williams and Good Morning America when we all know we can feel the fiscal fire and brimstone descending upon us. But I suppose they do convince a minority of the population that everything is hunky-dory: mainly politicians and CEO's of major corporations, which hire them to convince them that spending more money is the key to creating wealth (more on this later).

Anyway, let's talk about the economy. It's junk. Okay, I'm glad I got that out of the way. Now onto something else - something infinitely more important - let's talk about why the economy is junk.

I am an American, and therefore I will be speaking from an American perspective. But I venture to say, reading reports from economists (yea, they're helpful for some things, such as reminding us what we already know), this is a global economic disaster just waiting for permission to play harder. But I'm going to pick on America because, frankly, we're the idiots who started the whole downward spiral. I'll tell you why.

Kids know economics because they have piggy banks. Piggy banks are one of the most incredible learning tools in the world and - in my humble opinion - should replace graphs as the most displayed prop in economic classes. This is because when a kid doesn't have money in the piggy bank, he stops spending. Take little Johny for instance. He sits back and thinks and perhaps gets a bit perturbed and cries about how life is so unfair, but he doesn't spend money, because he doesn't have it. Then he goes to dad or mom and asks if he can work so he can have some more change in the piggy bank. So he works, gets paid, puts the money in the piggy bank, thinks about what he wants to buy, and purchases it. The cycle continues.

Let's jump ahead 30 years. Little Johny is now Big John, and consequently spends about 80% of his yearly income on his wife's jewelry and kitchen appliances, while she spends the other 95% on clothing and shoes. Wait a second! That doesn't add up! And you're absolutely right, but we do it anyway! Us humans are known for doing things that don't make any logical sense whatsoever.

Enter debt, which is a word we learned when we bought our first car back in high school. We couldn't afford our dream car, so we got into debt over it. Same with college, the wedding, the honeymoon, the house, the vacations, the boat, the swimming pool, etc. You get the idea. What happened to the piggy bank? It became obsolete along with Gunsmoke, MC Hammer and the 49er's.

But us little normal people peons aren't the only ones living outside our means. A conversation about debt cannot honestly be spoken without bringing up the United States government. What is it now? Close to $10 trillion and counting with the war against terror, failed investment banking bailouts, and White House dinners raking up. But that doesn't matter, because according to economics (at least what I learned in class), the stronger economy is the one which spends the most. Wow! Eye opening and amazing! That's what I should be doing to be in a better state financially. What a bunch of ludicrousy!

So now we are getting to the crux of the matter. This is really why I hate economics. The word has simply become an excuse for trying to make the numbers work when we know they don't - when we are spending more than we are bringing in - when we are living like a prince and only making the pauper's income. And don't get me wrong: the average American is quite wealthy. But even wealthy has its limits. Even the most affluent kings and businessmen and governments throughout history have dug themselves into financial pits in the name of extravagance and unchecked spending.

Which brings me to another point while I'm on the subject of ranting about economics: budget surplus. Americans will remember the days under the Clinton administration when the budget surplus was flouted as an amazing thing. Wow! We finally as a national government started raking in more dough than we dished out! And that is a step in the right direction. But while we were celebrating about how great our economy was, we almost forgot about the few trillion dollar debt still over our heads. It's still there, people. We can't just ignore it and hope it passes away like summer.

And this leads me to my final rant: People, stop blaming the economists and government. Government, stop blaming the people. Everyone, stop blaming the system. What's all this talk about the system anyway? It's like we're in the Matrix or something. Get real, people! The only system there really is is your habitual system of living outside your means!

So if you happen to be an economist, a government treasury worker, a CEO of a major corporation, or just a normal person, consider this: get a piggy bank. For a change start paying off the debt you have racked up. Take responsibility for your fiscal mismanagement. Get back to the days of pigs and pecuniary pride.

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Answers to pop quiz economic questions in article above:

- X-inefficiency - The underperformance of a firm that has a monopoly position.

- Countercyclical Fiscal Policy -Fiscal policy in which the government offsets any change in aggregate expenditures that would create a business.

- Pareto Optimal Policy - Policy that benefits some people and hurts no one.

- Law of Diminishing Marginal Rate of Substitution - As you get more and more of a good, if some of that good is taken away, then the marginal addition of another good you need to keep you on your indifference curve gets less and less.