bizarreville

The Bizarreville Congress is in the process of passing a sweeping new bank bill in the wake of the financial crisis that almost took Bizarreville down to its knees.  In point of fact, Bizarreville was pretty much already down to its knees, but the financial meltdown took it down to around the ankle region.

The new bill would create new oversight agencies, a process to split up “too big to fail” banks, impose new limits on derivative trading, reform rating agencies, and offer a new Consumer Protection bureau to enforce rules on various ripoffs.

This last item seems to have created the most resistance.  Shmeldnik Easy Ripoff Loan Company spokesman Elmer Shmeldnik was vociferously opposed to the new bill, and spoke out in front of the Sports stadium yesterday.  He said that he had no problem smacking around those big ornery banks with their fancy offices and obnoxious bonuses…suggesting that they may need to draw and quarter a few of them.

But he was very upset about hammering the “little guy”, an interesting play on words since Shmeldnik is only about 5 feet tall.  He argued that the small businesses of Bizarreville are just trying to make a quick buck, and it is just not fair tightening the nuse on the building blocks to Bizarreville commerce like this.  He claimed that his 38 percent loans help many specialized  business owners bridge short-term cash shortage situations, thus keeping them alive when otherwise they might fold.  And his private heavy hand security force provides dozens and dozens of jobs to guys with no  education whatsoever who have been basically unable to work in many other parts of the economy.

Many in Congress are listening to Shmeldnik and others as they work their way through the process.

The Post Office, earlier this month, had announced a dismal future outlook for their agency.  Coming off a $3.9 billion loss in 2009, with $10 billion debt on their books, they reported that their old operating paradigm was no longer working.  Even though they had cut 40 thousand employees and planned another 50 thousand in cuts along with drastic scalebacks in retiree health coverage, the future still looks grim.  Unless they change, they could be looking at $238 billion in losses in the next 10 years, Post office officials said.  Earlier they had paid McKinsey & Company $4.8 million to conduct a consulting study to forecast the outlook and suggest a workable scenario.  The big-time consulting company took the money, spent about 14 minutes looking at their books, and gave them a 1-page report saying “You Suck”.

Yesterday, the Post Office finally delivered the news many were expecting.  They are going to totally cease operations.  The venerable Office which was founded over 230 years ago by Ben Franklin has been unable to make a go of it for at least 100 years, but has managed to hold on only through the generosity of the nation’s taxpayers footing the bill.  Officials said that it’s time to fold the tent.

As most know, much of the traditional mail has become obsolete with the advent of electronic mail and information transfer.  Greeting cards can now more effectively be sent to friends and family electronically, and avoid the cumbersome task of going to the gift store to pore through hundeds and hundreds of boring cards, in search of the one card that is least boring.  The only major items being now sent by snail mail are bills and junk mail.  Bill senders have informed their clients that they will be going 100% electronic.  So now, the only issue is the junk mail.

A consortium of waste management companies has banded together to offer a service to continue some form of junk mail delivery.  They reported that junk mail represents about 40% of their trash business by tonnage, and continuing the flow of this volume is critical to their survival.  They have developed some synergies which will help the whole process become more efficient, primarily by placing the junk mail deliveries into a new slot to be added in their customer garbage containers.  By adding this convenient feature, the customer will not even have to read the junk mail, just flip a small lever and the junk will automatically fall right into the canister.  Several large credit card companies have voiced objections to this practice…the consortium has responded that customers can still dig the material out if they wish…but it may be combined with old banana peels, coffee grounds, and dirty diapers…their choice.  

In an olive branch measure, the consortium said that it will consider hiring ex-postal workers to be garbage men, if they can pass the psychological exam.   

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction.  Don’t throw away your 44 cent stamps yet.

The poor Greeks.  Their high-spending socialist/welfare program, combined with running up enormous budget defecits put them in a huge financial hole they could not dig out of.  They have been working hard with other members of the European Union to arrange some sort of bail-out plan.  As part of the deal, they were going to force mandatory pay rate slashings and tax increases to try and get things back in check.  That action caused riots in the streets, as Greek citizens blamed banks, industries, motherhood, and apple pie for their troubles. They set fire to buildings, which ended up killing several people. 

Citizens in the other EU countries were very impressed with the Greeks and their approach to dealing with their own problems, so many have volunteered to jump in and help them out.  Groups from the UK, Germany, and France have sent large contingents of people armed with torches in their hands to help them burn down the entire country.  On the way to Greece, the volunteers were given copies of General William T. Sherman’s memoirs on how to set up a 60-mile wide line of earth scorchers and techniques on how to basically flatten the land in a few weeks, leaving nothing but ashes in its aftermath.

“I’ll admit it’s a radical strategy,” said one of the English volunteers who actually started drooling as he talked.  “But it’s certainly one way to cut costs, by just drastically reducing overhead.  Burn banks, burn stores, torch factories, level homes.  Get people to just get the hell out of here…not just the greedy capitalist types, but also the sponges who have been sucking life, like Hoover vacuum cleaners, out of the Greek economy for decades.  Get rid of all these a$$#&les.  Level it all, and start over.  Seems like a pretty clever idea to me, quite frankly.  Happy to take part.”

Many in the world community have been appalled by this burn-down strategy, citing it as dangerous to the humans, goats, and vegetable-life in Greece.  They have suggested an alternate plan whereby the other EU countries would have their own taxpayers chip in a couple thousand euros per family to send to the poor Greeks to get them out of this pickle.  But when they surveyed citizens at random about this voluntary giving approach, they were greeted by a barrage of obscenities aimed at members of their families, particularly their mothers, and suggesting some acts that were not even technically possible.   

But these critics have not slowed down the torch brigade one bit, and they are starting to amass camps near Argos this week.  Leaders say if they can get about 100 thousand people lined up with torches and axes in hand, they can get the job done in about 14 days, end to end.  And it could be even be quicker if they can get some of the outraged Greek citizens to join in the fun.

One lady, Scarlett Flumpopolis, said that she was not going to leave her home, her land, no matter what the Yankees did.  A neighbor reminded her that there would be no Yankees in this hoe-down, only Brits and other fellow Europeans.  “I hate those Yankees,” Scarlett replied.  “Oh, Rhett, Rhett, what shall we do?  What shall we do??”  Her husband Adrianas responded, “Who in the f#%& is Rhett?”

Disclaimer:   all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones that seem pretty darn real.

California, the newly emerging leader in the nanny-state movement, is trying its best to set the pace in government control of those whacky kids in the state.  The problem stems from the fact that most parents in California have given up trying to discipline their children, preferring rather the lay-back approach to just let things take their course.  The result has been an outbreak in fat kids, some weighing over 500 pounds before they reach 4 feet tall.  One school system reported that a busload of these obese monstrosities actually caused the rear wheels of the bus to go flat when they all waddled to the back of the bus.  The bus company spokesman said that they have implemented new seat assignment rules for the uber-chunksters, and are asking for state government stimulus help to help pay for repairs to tires and suspension system damage, as well as brake system upgrades to handle the hefty new loads.

The California government is taking swift action on the jumbo problem.  They recently enacted rules that prohibit the sale of toys in Happy Meals, and restrict the availability of GatorAde at schools to begin to address calorie intake.  But they say that this is just the beginning.  They are now putting together legislation that will put chubby little Johnnie on a diet he will never forget.  It will include immediate incarceration of any flabmaster eating a cheeseburger in public, a non-diet soft drink, an ice cream cone, or anything that doesn’t look like and smell like a granola bar.  If taken away, the chubblers will go to a special juvenile detention center where they will be fed saltine crackers and bottled water for 30 days, or 30 pounds, whichever comes first.  Supermarkets will be prohibited from selling taco chips, cheesecake, doughnuts, pork chops, or cream puffs to any family who has a certified chunkolunker.  Any father found guilty of buying restricted food for his child will have his beer card taken away for 6 months.

Many citizens have become outraged at this new restriction in basic freedom and this trend of becoming such a nanny state.  One mother said, “We like our Johnnie to look well fed.  You never know when the next depression will hit us, and if it does, Johnnie will be all set for probably 6 months or more.  You wait and see.”

But other families are taking it in stride, and think the whole movement is a good idea.  “Our Freddie has become such an enormous chowhound that we have found him wolfing down dog food during the late evenings,” one citizen reported.  “Puppy chow by the bag full.  Old Rover has started getting pretty pissed off about the whole deal, and has been doing his business on the carpet lately.  If these laws get Freddie off the dogfood bag, well, I’m all for it.”

Doctors are also weighing in on the issue, in favor of the nannyist movement to slim kids down.  “We are finding so many children with knee problems and back problems because their enormous stomach weight is wreaking havoc on their spinal system and joints throughout their bodies,” said one orthopedic.  “Besides, when these elephant-kids come in, they steal all my suckers and I have to go to WalMart and replenish them.  It’s time for action.”

It’s not clear whether the aggressive rules proposed will fly, but many say the fight will go on until no child weighs more than 250 pounds.

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction.

Comments have been flying high and wide analyzing the recent bumbled attempt to set off a car bomb in Times Square this week.  Faisal Shahzad, the alleged nutcase from Pakistan’s Cradle of Nutballs region, used cheap firecrackers, a Dollar Store one buck alarm clock, and a strange combination of quasi-explosives in the muffed attempt.  The mayor of New York called the attempt “amateurish”, while other pundits described it as an “incompetent pitiful bombing misadventure”.  Truly, most have agreed that this bombing attempt was certainly one of the five most pathetic bombing attempts in modern history, and in a tight race with the Christmas underwear bomber for this year’s “Pinto” award.

Shahzad, who was undergoing tough questioning at the nearby Hyatt luxury hotel and spa, was reached for comments during coffee/juice break time.  He strongly objected to being characterized as amateurish.  “I have spent many months in the finest Taliban camps and Al Qaeda s#!t-holes to learn bomb making and explosivology.  I have tutored under some of the most renowned Islamic terrorist trainers who have sent hundreds, no thousands, of suicide bombers to virgin-infested heaven.  I can show you a 10-page resume of mischief experience and wrongdoing that could rival any scumbag you put me up against.  To call me an amateur is an insult to me, my family, and to the entire terrorist nation.  I am a professional.”

The Professional Bombers Association agreed with the mayor and pundits.  A spokesman for the association said that Shahzad is a shahzad, just what his name says:  “In our international brotherhood lexicon, a shahzad is a total bumbling nitwit.  His original name was Mohammed Shlunkmeyer, but his buddies changed his name to Shahzad as a joke.  I guess he never got it.  In any case, he never passed our rigorous car bomber certification test, never paid his dues.”

He went on to say, “Look at his whole bomb set up.  He buys a dirt cheap SUV for 1300 bucks, no navigation system, cheap 4-speaker stereo.  He loads it with artificial fertilizer that any idiot would know won’t work.  The stuff doesn’t even smell like S#!t, for crying out loud!!  How dumb can you be to buy fertilizer that don’t stink?  Then he wires it up like he’s he’s wiring a shlunkfunkler.  Geez, man.  Don’t embarass us professionals by calling yourself one.” 

He went on to say that Shahzad should be locked up, put away for good…but he snickered every time he spoke the word Shahzad.  “Cracks me up, man, cracks me up.”

 Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction.

Within moments of Arizona passing its tough-minded new law to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants, the mayor of San Francisco took to the microphone.  He informed the public, and in particular the City employees, that effective immediately there would be no more boondoggles of City employees to any part of Arizona.  This included no sidetrips to the Hoover dam on any City summits or symposiums to Vegas, or any special City Issues Conferences and Golf Outings in Scottsdale.  “If those cowboys down there want to start 3rd degreeing every ordinary citizen they come across…well, we will have no part in it,” the mayor said.

Reporters questioned the mayor whether the true reason for his pronouncement was because perhaps he had illegal Mexicans on his staff.  The mayor became outraged, “What…are you guys now going to enjoin this whole McCarthyism program and start badgering the good staff of citizens who make our city work so well?  Did I just fall asleep and wake up in Nazi Germany or something?”

After San Francisco broke the ice, a number of other cities jumped on the bandwagon, instructing their staffs to rebook their boondoggles to non-Arizona destinations.  One large city mayor immediately switched to one of the Dakotas.  When staffers complained that there was nothing to do in the Dakotas, the mayor said, “What about Mount Rushmore??  I’ve been there 7 times and plan to go again next summer.  You can’t get enough of that place, in my opinion.”  A reporter asked what about the flood of illegal Canadians that keep crossing the border and pouring into the Dakotas, literally unwatched and unregulated.  He replied, “Now that you mention it, there are a lot of people up there who put ‘Eh?’ on the end of their sentences.”

Other mayors and even some state governors are scrambling to reschedule their boondoggles in order to avoid the spotlight.  Many saw what happened when the group of City officials from Mixfart, Idaho, who were on a “business development” mission to Phoenix started getting questioned and scrutinized by protesters and reporters while they dined at a 5-star restaurant.  “Often Joe Public does not fully understand the value that these fact-finding trips uncover,” a senior Mixfart official said.  “They just see a bunch of city people lounging around, drinking cabernet around the pool at a luxo-resort, eating surf and turf, and getting in a few rounds of golf or tennis on the taxpayer tab.  They totally miss those mid-morning meetings where we talk details about city business…serious details, for sometimes over an hour.”

Many cities are under time pressure to get these trips in.  Some have been funded with Federal Stimulus program money, and could be under pressure after November.  But most are confident they can find alternate places to go.  One official said, “We’ll go to Europe if we have to.”

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones that seem pretty darn real.