bizarreville

Members of Congress were invited down to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Most members had thought that the purpose of the trip was to make a full assessment of the crisis, so they could report back to their constituents that solid action steps were underway to correct the problem.  Turns out, that was half right.

The full truth was that they were going down to actually be part of the solution.  A prestigious Bizarreville engineering firm, Shmedlock Partners LLC, came up with an ingenious soluton to stop the leaking oil.   They determined that if they could harness a high volume of excessively hot air, channel it into the broken pipeline through a specially designed nozzle, they could boil the oil, turning it into a gas.  Then with a separate pipeline under vacuum and a separator, they could extract the petroleum in gas-form, evaporate it on the ship, and load it onto an oil tanker.

The challenge, of course, was where to find a sufficient source of very hot air to make the process work.  That’s when young engineer, Jimbo Milkfard, suggested using Congress.  Principals in the engineering firm were surprised and excited about the brilliance in this young man’s elegant, simple solution to such a complex problem.

“The combination of the warm, humid ambient air and the high-volume of hot air coming out of legislator pie-holes is more than enough to boil the oil,” said Milkfard who had just completed the energy calculations.  “We may have to keep them on the mother ship for a few weeks until the situation stabilizes…may have to keep them there indefinitely.”

Preliminary polls taken of public reaction show overwhelming support of this idea.  “It’s a tradeoff,” said one anonymous citizen.  “One one hand, you have a solution that will clearly protect the environment, saving millions of birds and fish, and protecting vulnerable sea shores from long-term devastation.  On the other hand, we could have these blowhards stay in the Capital discovering and implementing new ways to waste our money.  Hmmmm…tough choice.”

Some congress people have belly-ached about this not-quite-voluntary effort to actually do something about the crisis, saying that they have lots of paperwork and other work to do.  The military has been brought in to help escort the feet-draggers down to the Gulf coast, and load them onto the boat.  One freshman congressman argued that he hadn’t been in congress long enough to develop a strong source of hot air.  But he was put on the boat anyway.  “Every BTU helps,” said the boat captain.

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones you wish were true.

The Bizarreville government has just proclaimed that officially accredited journalists have carte blanche rights to stalk the victims of their stories.  This ruling came on the heels of the flap over reporter/author Joe McGinniss moving into a house next to Sarah Palin in order to gather material to write an upcoming book, Sarah’s Alaskan Secrets.

“Journalists need to be able to research their stories,” said Phillip Smellburn, a government spokesman.  “And there’s no better way that we’ve found than good old-fashioned stalking.”  The spokesman pointed to new stalkological advances in binocular resolution, digital video compression, parabolic dish sound capturing, an discreet audio filtering that helps even relatively inexperienced stalkers stalk like crusty old pros.  The captured information with new equipment is so much juicier than the dribs and drabs uncovered with the old equipment, and this ultimately makes for a more tangy story that people will actually want to read.

And this was a key reason for the ruling.  Smellburn noted that fewer and fewer people are taking time to read news stories, investigative articles, or books for that matter.  People say that it’s all too darn boring.  Newspaper subscripations, magazine subscriptions, and book sales have correspondingly plummeted.  By making stories full of scathing pieces, risque vignettes, and snippets of uncouth quotations that can be trimmed out of context, readers will flock to the stories, and help rebuild lost readership.  “And keeping people’s reading skills high is good for Bizarreville.”

Critics have been outraged and appalled by this ruling as “unconscionable in any kind of civilized society”.  But Smellburn is quick to point out that “things aren’t all that civilized anymore.  What’s your point?”

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

The White House just announced plans to change suppliers of their official hand-wringing towels.  They claim that the current supplier has failed to deliver a consistent quality  product that can hold up to the demands of their intense users.

A White House spokesman indicated that the previous towels provided by Waaah Waaah Inc literally turned into shreds during the current BP oil spill crisis.  “They just were not up to the task,” the spokesman said.  “We had a group of 10 of us in the Oval Office wimpering, crying, and wringing the snot out of those towels.  9 out of 10 basically disintegrated, turning into a mangled mess of sloppy thread.  The 10th was used by a staffer who apparently dozed off during the meeting.”

Waaah Waaah has said that they never warrantied their product line for this enormous level of wringing that the towels recently were subjected to.  They said that they would have normally expected the Chief Executive to stop crying, and start doing something at this stage of the crisis, as all his predecessors would have done by now.  “This Chief has just thrown us for a loop,” said Frank Waaah, CEO of the company.  “It appears we are in a new age of fret, that may require us to totally rethink how our product line is designed.”

The new supplier, Boohooski Wet Mops Inc., promised to deliver hand-wringers made out of heavy-duty denim with kevlar wire reinforcement.  They say that their towels are strictly made for wringing, and caution the texture is much too rough for facial skin contact.  They claim that they will guarantee the steady performance of their Max Wring Whinecloths for either the entire length of the BP oil spill crisis, or 2 years, whichever comes first.

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones you would swear are real.

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.

The President, tired and confused from a busy week, talked today about his upcoming priorities to rein in Wall Street, and implement sweeping climate control legislation to address global warming, or global cooling, whatever it seems to be doing.  But in the course of getting ready for his speech, the teleprompter text got mixed up.  Somehow, the President’s lunch order for Chinese also got fumbled into the mix.  It all went something like this:

Friends, it has become apparent to me that a pressing national priority absolutely must be to put an end to the Wall Street mavericks who are spewing tons and tons of carbon dioxide, creating the greenhouse effect in our world.  On Earth Day, a day we celebrate the greenness of our hundred dollar bills, we can no longer merely accept a passive approach to burning cash and melting down coins just so the investment bankers and squirrelly speculators can eat General Tso chicken and pork fried rice.  It is their irresponsibility that inevitably created the economic crash that caused us to order the Cash for Clunkers program to reduce smog, and eliminate the odor that can come from sweet and sour sauce. 

So we will be taking firm steps to curtail coal-fired electrical power plants, and replace them with clean burning wontons.  There will be tax penalties that will have to be paid by these dirty industries, with proceeds going to help the poor homeless families who have been tossed out via foreclosures and/or failure to pay the delivery charge on their order.  But there will also be incentives for those people at Goldman Sachs and fuel-efficient bankers who continue to support our highest ideals, or at least continue to send me those fat campaign contribution checks (ha, ha).  But seriously, friends, our future, our kids’ futures, and the future of egg foo young are all at stake if we don’t insist on accountability for clean restrooms. 

Therefore, I am directing Congress to immediately pass these laws before our planet gets too warm and our egg-drop soup gets too cold.  It is time for us to act decisively, force all the greedy bankers to be quarantined at Three Mile Island, force all the polluters to eat sushi, and stop all the confusing rhetoric.  I am asking all the freedom-loving kooks who listen to talk radio or read the crazy stuff in blogs like “bizarreville” to cease and desist drinking green tea, and taste this new flavor of KoolAid that I just came across…tastes a little bit like sulfur dioxide.  And remember if we all just walk to our schools, stores, and workplaces we will save enough energy to buy a pu-pu platter.

Thank you, and have a good Moo Goo Gai Pan.

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction.

A Look inside the book….

Chapter One.

The tyrant-wannabe must first understand that it is not as easy being tyrannical as you would think.  It takes time, persistence, a willingness to go that extra mile in demonstrating consistent nastiness in a new, exciting unpredictable ways.  Many potentially world-class tyrants have failed to reach the pinnacles because they became too predictable…particularly in the ways they mistreated and tormented their people.  Best practice has always been to gin up a new element of creepiness each and every day that is radically different from the creep show the day before.

It is important that the tyrant-in-training first decide which type of tyrant he/she wants to be:

1. Benevolent tyrant who claims to be taking total charge in order to help people, particularly those who have not been able to realize full happiness in their lives.  These people may have pursued happiness, only to discover that some jerk took it away.  The benevolent tyrant will promise leveling things out, and naturally break that promise on a regular basis.

2. Taskmaster tyrant who decides, by gosh, he’s got a job to do, and will get it done by shear force.  This tyrant believes he has a mandate from his adoring public to do whatever it takes, and feels he has total authority over his whole domain.  He will command his subjects to fulfill his wishes.  Head beatings may be necessary for slackers to his orders.

3. Ruthless tyrant who takes the taskmaster tyrant flavor one step further.  He normally discovers the root of all society problems is confined to certain people whose behavior is abhorant to him.  He spends most of his time trying to figure out ways to mum these people.

The irony in the tyrant choice decision is that it doesn’t really matter which flavor you choose.  All end up essentially behaving the same way in time.  But most successful tyrants prefer to look like #1, the benevolent tyrant, because it plays better in the press.  It allows the creation of an image of empathy, which is effective at tricking the gullible public into believing he will truly help them out of their situation.  Of course, by the time they realize that they just stepped into a bucket of s#!&t, it’s too late, baby.

Next, it is very important for the tyrant trainee to engage in Mirror time.  He must practice the various tyrant “looks”, with at least 6 reps of 20 minute look drills per day, especially in the early days of the tyranny.  He should practice the look of growling at flunkie interruptions, eyeball popouts during any staff disagreement, furled eyebrows at idiotic citizen comments, total disgust at any sort of bad news, rage at any insubordination, and generally a scowl as a default look.  Repeated practice will make these looks come natural to the tyrant when the situation arises, since often there will not be a mirror available when needed.

The tyrant will want to quickly begin to develop his own henchman security force, who will bust heads, bust chops to enforce your agenda.  It’s good to start early and create a probation program that will sort the true stars from the hench-talkers who talk a good game, but cannot truly clock a guy with one swift swipe.  Alignment training will be required, formerly known as brain-washing.  Brain-washing was never a very adequate term to use, since technically brains were never truly being washed in the detergent sense of the word.  In modern times, terms like visioning, developing common purpose, and execution are more politically correct terms to use to describe getting your henchmen’s priorities right.

In the next chapter, we will discuss other important early aspects of creating that tyranny that historians will talk about for millenia, including the importance of selecting the proper gold and/or gem-encrusted throne that speaks to your individual personality.

The Left wing Administration, during the process of rolling-out their Total People Control program, have begun to feel a wee bit of pressure from ordinary citizens.  People are finally waking up from their political sleep, defogging their brains, and coming to realize that they could end up losing a lot of freedoms in the future, as these Changes You Can Believe In elements take hold.  More and more citizens are starting to get vocal at Tea Party rallies and Town Hall meetings.  Others are sending emails to their representatives…but of course, those are pretty much getting s#!*t canned by screeners, who are protecting the representatives’ delicate ears from such blatant in-your-face feedback.

But last week, the Administration staffers got their eggheads together and developed a fool-proof plan to combat this wave of discontent, and get on a new course to change public opinion.  One of the Senior Gophers came up with the brilliantly innovative idea of issuing Liberty Coupons.  For that bit of initiative, the Gopher was given 2 free movie passes to the theater of his choice and 1 large popcorn/Coke combo…total estimated value of over 100 bucks.

The Liberty Coupons program would work like this.  Liberty Coupons could be granted by any member of government to individuals who have displayed superior loyalty, taken brave action to help crush any opposition, or just suck-up well.  These coupons could be sold or traded, but each coupon would allow the bearer the privilege of garnering one small act of freedom.  Multiple coupons could be used for larger acts of freedom.  All coupon redemption offers would be illustrated in a full-color catalog, produced by the new Department of People Control.

For example, one Liberty Coupon could allow the bearer to procure a simple act of freedom, such as being entitled to read a Sean Hannity book, buy a Rock&roll CD, or be allowed to cut down a tree on his/her property.  Trading in 5 Liberty Coupons could allow you to visit the Doctor of your choice, or perhaps be able to purchase a large order of fries at a designated McDonalds or Burger King.  A five-spot could allow a citizen the right to buy a 6-pack of Old Milwaukee beer at a non-governmental beverage distributor.  Or, it could allow you to paint a wall in your home a color other than the normally prescribed “Autumn Wheat”.

And it would go up from there.  Ten coupons, for example, could permit you to lock your home doors.  Twenty coupons would allow you to purchase a non-hybrid vehicle…and for 2 more coupons, you could actually be allowed to buy a diesel.  Mind you, the coupons don’t cover the price of the merchandise you would have to pay…only the right to be able to make the purchase….consumers would still have to fork over the dough, in addition to the Coupon. 

Thirty coupons would permit you to send your children to a non-ghetto school…or allow you to accept a job in the rapidly dwindling private sector…that is, if there are still any jobs available.

The Administration likes the program’s premise, in that it is modeled after the successful Rewards programs that people now love so much.  And the Liberty Coupon program will encourage the behavior of “saving up” for those freedoms that people cherish the most, rather than just wasting Liberty Coupons on small trivial freedoms that don’t really matter that much to them.  All in all, the staff seems enthusiastic about finding this common ground with the Freedom Seekers contingent out there, and plan to get this program rolling on a fast-track by July.

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

During an interview a couple weeks ago, Congressman John Dingell from Michigan had an inadvertant slip of the tongue and let out the administration’s next series of strategies in the Change You Can Believe In program.  Dingell is the longest serving congressman in the House, having been reelected an amazing 26 times.  He has kept the liberal vision alive during all that time, and with the recent change in power, seems was just unable to control his exhuberence.

Dingell was quoted saying: “…it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that will have to be taken to put legislation together to control the people.”  The ‘control the people’ phrase set off a firestorm in conservative camps who immediately started probing into the next shoe-drop in the move toward socialism that is expected to be proposed by summer.  Under huge pressure, Mr. Edlard Smurf, spokesman for the administration finally relented and addressed the crowds.

“John has let the freaking cat out of the bag on our yet-to-be-announced program on tighter people control.  I guess he has been supporting this move for so long, that he just could no longer hold it in.  No matter.  Affectionately known as Project ViceGrip around here, it will be intended to quickly bring an end to the out-of-control freedoms that have simply lingered too long.  People have unfortunately been given too much choice…where to live, where to go for french fries, how to dance, where to go to college, what jobs to get…on and on.  And you see where it has gotten us?  To a country where some people live very well, and others live like crap.  It’s just not fair, the President knows it, and you know it.  Our new ViceGrip program will be the great equalizer.”

Smurf references how well tight control has worked with smoking.  By raising cigarette taxes and limiting where people can smoke, the government has been able to make a significant change in people’s behavior.  And even though there are many people who continue to smoke, Smurf says that it is mainly confined to dirt bags, rednecks, drug users, and kids.   

Smurf says that their People control program will be a comprehensive roll-out, that will eventually rein in behaviors of all kind that the Leaders feel are unhealthy, unwise, unproductive, or unfair.  In some cases, there will be incentives to encourage good behavior…such as eating carrots instead of cheese balls, or walking to the market instead of driving.  Specific incentives have yet to be determined, but could include things like free movie tickets to G-rated shows, a case of Granola bars, or a 6-pack of prune juice.  Extraordinary good behavior could get you a free vacation in Cuba with Michael Moore as your host.

But in addition to the “carrot” approach, there will also be the “stick” …for misbehavior such as attending Tea Party rallies, listening to Glenn Beck, or making profit in a business.  Even something as simple as Working Hard will be watched closely in order to flush out anyone who tries to play the one-upsmanship game.  Extra paddy wagons will be appropriated to shuttle off these ne’er-do-wells to various holding cells for remedial realignment retraining. 

ViceGrip will be extended to the college admission process by nationalizing all colleges.  Smurf says that there is no feasible way to reach true equality over who gets in and who gets tossed…so a select Committee will decide.  And their decision will not be based solely on the semi-unfair traditional measures such as high school grades or the SAT scores.  No, the Committee will have the latitude to consider all objective and subjective factors when making their assignments…with the watchword being “equalizing”.  Smurf said that those egghead prima donnas with the 1600 SAT scores may just find themselves enrolled at Bumf*#!k University next semester.

Dingell was later reached for comment, and said that he had originally wanted just a little more government control, but ViceGrip takes it far beyond his wildest dreams.  When asked how his suburban Detroit constituents will react to ViceGrip and whether this could influence his ability to go for a 27th term, Dingell said “I don’t really give a sh!*t.  I’m ready to retire anyway.”

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