bizarreville

Leaders in the Bizarreville Congress got very perturbed this week when they learned that Congress’ approval rating reached a new low.  But they were even more concerned with the numbers:  a zero percent approval rating for the first time in history.  Naturally, they responded that there must be an error in the polling procedure…that there is no way that a zero was feasible, at least one person should have said they liked and approved of Congress.

“We’re confident in our reported numbers,” Ogden Murkrud of the Murkrud Poll responded.  “In fact, we expanded the number of people surveyed from our usual sample of 2 thousand surveyees to 237 thousand people.  But we were unable to find one single person who thought Congress was worth a crap.  One fellow, when asked whether he felt Congress was doing ‘adequate’, initially responded ‘Yes’.  However, turns out the respondent thought he had been asked if Congress ‘out to quit’.  He apologized, and said he needed to change the batteries in his hearing aid.”

Surveyed citizens seemed most upset about the so-called “Nothing from nothing equals nothing” debt/spending deal reached last week, which helped trigger a mega-drop in the stock market.  A group of 3rd graders from Stankville Elementary were asked if they could help the President and Congress figure out how to solve the nation’s increasing money problem.  “Stop spending so much,” one student replied.  “When my pet turtle Freddie started bloating up like an overblown balloon, I thought he was gonna die, with turtle guts spewed all over my bedroom.  I was really scared cuz I really like Freddie, even though he kinda stinks.  But so, I decided to stop feeding him so much turtle food every day, and now he’s back to normal.  My mom just said to keep him on a diet…whatever that is.  Anyway, he’s unbloated now.  And now he doesn’t even stink so bad.”

Congress is now in recess, and going back to their homes to figure out how to re-boost their approval ratings.  One congressman said he’s going to schedule some free bingo tournaments with his constituents.  He said he accumulated some great giveaways, procured with some extra earmark funds he had stashed away. “Freebies always put people in better moods,” he said.  “I think I’ll be back up in the 10 to 12% approval rating by September.”

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, but you knew that, didn’t you?

And hope that your ear’s full of wax.

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction.

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The President met with senior leaders of the Bizarreville Congress all weekend attempting to forge a government spending/debt reduction deal in order to allow the Debt ceiling to be raised.  The sides continued to be far apart due to the enormous number of sacred cows that were unwilling to be compromised.

Congress asked the President to put an end to all the stupid wars around the world that had no apparent mission, no tangible benefit, and were wasting money by the hundreds of billions.  The President responded that useless missions were a fundamental promise he made to citizens during his campaign, and he could not back down now.  He pointed out the progress made in Funkistan to unseat the ruthless dictator Elmo Shlabba.  “Yes, sir, but who gives a crap about Funkistan?” commented a congressional leader.  “The only thing they contribute to the world economy is that they produce 1% of the world’s lima beans.  Who in the hell likes lima beans??  They taste like bird doo-doo.”  The President responded that there was more to the situation than lima beans, but admitted he did, in fact, like lima beans.

The President then turned the tables and insisted on the need for new tax increases.  “It’s been years since we’ve had a good, old-fashion, healthy tax increase.  If you go too long, taxpayers get complacent and forget about their responsibility to cover entitlements to those less-motivated.  These poor people are entitled, by their birthright in Bizarreville, to be able to sponge for a living.  And somebody’s got to pay the ever-increasing tab.  You don’t turn a blind eye to these people, and ignore them just because they’re lazy.  That’s not who we are.”

Opposition party leaders rebuked the idea of tax increases, stating that their Tea Party constituents feel they’ve been taxed enough already.  But the President promised that his proposed tax increases would not apply to everyone…only those people that had a job.  He further proposed that he would require all businesses to give every employee a 10% raise to compensate for their increased taxes.  “That way,” he said, “No one is really hurt.  We make everyone whole, and guess what?  The National Debt gets chiseled away.”  The opposing leaders said they might be able to live with that stipulation, but counter-proposed that the increase be 15%, just to be on the safe side.

But Congress still wants a meaningful reduction in stupid government spending and lame, nonsensical government bureaucracy that produces no intrinsic national value.  The President commented that they have tried doing that before in the past, but inevitably it ends up going nowhere.  “The bureaucracy kills all bureaucracy-killers, and furthermore, adds new bureaucracy in the fight.  Every spending-reduction initiative results in more spending.  Every streamline attempt creates new turbulence.  It’s a bureaucratic paradox…a Bureaudox.  Best just to give up, stay the course with the status quo, and not fuss.”

Congress seems to be weakening their position on spending cuts, now that the Bureaudox concept has come to light.

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

The Bizarreville Congress continues to argue and debate spending and taxing scenarios ad nauseum, and wily congressmen are digging deep to gin up new schemes with clever-sounding, catchy names.  The most recent one, proposed by Senator J. Ribbletart Twadd, is what he called “Cut, Cap, Balance, Toss, and Mop”.  It includes an element to please everyone…or displease everyone.  No matter.

The proposition starts with a healthy, aggressive series of spending cuts.  There will naturally be the low-hanging fruit cuts of obvious goofy programs like Ant Hill Architecture Study.  But then it will get to the major cuts in all government agencies, resulting in layoffs of millions of pencil-pushing spreadsheet shufflers, thumb-twiddling admino-funk journeymen, and other office seat warmers.  Large staffs of finance clerks will be replaced by Bob from AccountTemps, and HR departments will be appropriately vaporized.  Congressmen who have enjoyed bulging staffs of administrative uber-flunkies with lavish budgets will be trimmed down to sharing Dorothy, the husky girl Friday who got lost around Tuesday.

The second element would be to Cap the Debt Ceiling.  Most legislators are in agreement on this element…the question is:  what limit?  A straw poll was taken and the ranges varied, but it seemed like consensus could be reached by calling the cap $1 quadrillion…a good round number, and certainly a cap that would allow the millions and millions of people currently sponging off the system to ween off.

Balancing the Budget is the tough one.  Congress members become brainwashed early in their terms of office that there is no need to balance, never has been a need to balance…why start now?  They are indoctrinated into the Backscratching culture, the Whats In It For Me negotiating whine, and actually take night classes on Financial Bumblenomics 101, 102, and Advanced Wasteage and Pissaways.  The thought of balancing is so abhorrent to them that it leads to the 4th element:  Toss.

Tossing of Cookies will most certainly happen as these addicted spendaholics are faced with the Balancing grim reality…the end of spending freedom as they knew it.  That internal stress/strain will pull hard on their abdominal muscles, causing massive stomach acid release, and the inevitable projectile Chow Blow.  The good news is that soon the blowing and dry heaving ends.  The bodily systems learn to adapt to the new reality of living within means.  The contracted muscles and popped-out veins begin to return to their normal state.

All that remains is the Mopping.  This could be a tough issue, given the pink-slipping of would-be moppers among the congressional flunk staff.  But that’s when the Constitutional process comes in…a new Constitutional Amendment which requires senators and congresspeople to mop up their own stinky vomit.  It is quite certain that this amendment would quickly receive the 75% state passage votes, and become law of the land.

While the Cut, Cap, Balance, Toss, Mop proposal seems logical, almost a slam-dunk in its attractiveness, it still faces some uphill battles convincing the Congressional Old Fart caucus, who may struggle seeing its merits.  Stay tuned.

All stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the sensible ones.

…You people with jobs need to pay more of your Fair Share of taxes.  I’m tired of arguing with you, and really tired of you and your Tea Party buddies whining about paying more tax.  “Pay up, Shut up” is gonna be my new slogan.  Pay up, shut up.  You don’t seem to grasp that we have a recession going on.  No, no, you don’t.  And most of you in this room have jobs.  Am I right?  Well, you job-people need to help the non-job and the sub-job portions of our population.  You need to step up to your responsibilities to pay…yes, sometimes paying out the fabled ying yang…to get this debt under control.

You, over there.  You with the salmon-colored polo shirt.  You have a job, right?  Right.  And how much do you figure you pay in taxes, percentage-wise?  Forty-two percent…is that what you said?  42 lousy percent.  That means you’re taking way over half of your wages home with you every paycheck.  I’m guessing your blowing it on food, beer, a fancy shmancy house in the burbs, polos shirts for every person in your family…Nike shoes, right?  Not Bilford Athletic Econo-shoes…no, sir.  Nike.  Are you expecting the rest of the country to get by with Bilfords?  Is it fair that your kids can wear Nikes, but the bum’s kid out there on the street gets stuck with Bilfords?  Is that the kind of country we want to be…one with an ever-widening shoe gap?  Is it??

Pay up, shut up.  Fork over a few more measly dollars so that no one has to wear Bilfords unless they choose to.  Let’s erase that stigma from our society.

You know, you may find yourself needing help some day.  That’s right.  None of us are immune from the so-called green weenie, the axeman, the Chain-saw Al, the Neutron Jack, the pink slip.  I’ll bet a lot of you don’t have 2 cents in a savings account, living paycheck to paycheck, bar tab to bar tab.  You may well find yourself destitute and looking for someone to sponge off of one day.  That’s when you’ll see it all from the other side.  That’s when you’ll be saying Pay up, Shut up along with me.  You…you in the back row, nodding…yeah, you know what I mean.  Pay up, shut up doesn’t sound so bad, does it?  Exactly.  Why wait for it to happen?  Join us now, see the future.  Your future.  Let’s all say it together…Pay up, shut up, pay up, shut up, Pay Up, Shut Up, PAY UP, SHUT UP…that’s right…PAY UP, SHUT UP…now we’re talking.

My friends, trust me when I say that you will all feel better by just paying a little more.  You will have an enormous wave of self-satisfaction sweep over you as you realize your taxes are helping so many people live a better life.  You’ll take great joy as you see a raggety old bum shuffle into a Starbucks for a free cup of latte, perhaps for the first time ever.  You’ll get a tingle when you see an obese lady able to buy a grocery cart load of National brand potato chips with her food stamps.  You’ll have a sense of satisfaction watching 10 government-subsidized workers filling a pothole on Main Street, knowing that each will be bringing home a paycheck to momma.  And it’s all because you Paid Up and Shut up.  Join us.

Good night, friends.

Disclaimer:  All stories in Bizarreville are fiction, including town hall secret tapings.

More congresspeople on both sides of the aisle are now belatedly recognizing that the Debt can stand no more raising.  This realization has apparently come after these lunks and lunk staffs had been barraged with phone calls from their 4th and 5th grade Math teachers, who scolded them on their failure to understand basic arithmetic…and in particular their seemingly total obliviousness to the chapter on “Subtraction”.  The scoldings have appeared to have hit home, as many voted down the recent attempt to raise the debt ceiling.

Mrs. Marge Flumpzit, who was the elementary school teacher of Harry Reid, was an outspoken member of this band of teachers.  Flumzit, who is now 97 years old, still remembers the precocious Reid who was always throwing spitballs at the girls in class while she was trying to explain how subtraction worked…and how it was quite different from addition.  Flumpzit was able, in those days, to be able to whack Reid with a yardstick or fire a piece of chalk at his ear if he was not paying full attention.  But, she says, it did no good as Reid would resume his spitball fettish moments later.  “The bad thing,” she lamented, “was that I’d have to go clean up those disgusting, slimy balls of snotty goo after class.  Some of them would literally stick to the wall.  Yeah, I don’t think that kid retained one lousy ounce of subtraction knowledge.”

Experts in the field of Mathematics Education have explained that this phenomenon is not that uncommon, particularly among dimwits.  Jonathan Wanker, the Executive Director of the Mathnerd Institute, says that kids with lightly loaded melons often struggle with the difficult concepts of subtraction and division, frequently turning to a variety of distractions, which may include daydreaming, writing little notes to classmates, or wetting their pants, as defensive measures.

The sad thing, Wanker states, is that all too frequently these subtraction-ignoramuses tend to find careers in Politics.  Their lack of fluency with Subtraction can, and has, become a real danger to the unsuspecting public, who often have trouble understanding how a congress person or senator can really be that dumb.  The public just does not realize, according to Wanker, that some people are not wired to process this “higher level” math, no matter how much tutoring or yardstick whacking they receive.

Wanker sas that, eventually, citizens may require that politicians take a simple arithmetic test, including plenty of subtraction problems, before being allowed to register as a candidate.  The test may have subtraction problems that are 5, 6, or maybe even 9 digits long to really test the skill level and competency.  This, he says, may not screen out all the numbskulls, but it could certainly make a dent.

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

The battle continues in Capitol Valley on what to do about The Debt.  The Debt, as most people know, is an old ramshackle building next door to the Bizarreville Capitol where all the IOU’s are kept that have stemmed from the rampant mindless government borrowings to fund its wild and crazy spending spree over many years.

In early times, the IOU’s were neatly filed in beautiful oak file cabinets, alphabetized by lender, with an army of secretaries doing the filing in crisp manila folders.  As the IOU rate accelerated, the oak cabinets became jammed full, and they had to buy some cheap metal cabinets…later ratcheting down to cardboard cabinets.  But, after a while, the incoming IOU’s were just too rapid-fire, so they went with plain old brown boxes.  Soon after, when the job of “secretary” was eliminated by Bizarreville courts as being “too demeaning to the soul…a reprehensible exploitation of women…an excuse to have glorified waitresses shlepping coffee for a bunch of lazy suits,” the organized filing simply ceased.  IOU’s were just dollied into rooms, closets, and hallways, and dumped helter skelter.  Papers were strewn everywhere.

When all the available space was packed as tight as a colon on a no-fiber diet, the Elders determined that the only solution was to raise The Debt ceiling, and add another flat of rooms.  That would free up some space in lower floors, so they said, in case anyone wanted to navigate through the mess to pay off a few of the IOU’s.  Unfortunately, though, before the next floor was even roughed-in, it began to fill with new truckloads of IOU paperwork, promissory notes being shuttled in continuously.  The Bizarreville fathers hurriedly raised the ceiling again, and started construction of another floor.  The lack of time for architectural planning or construction oversight caused a few, mostly cosmetic, issues to develop which were corrected with careful gerryrigging.

The Spenders were happy with the solution of adding more and more floors.  Sure, the building was ugly, but it was functional, and really that’s all that mattered.  The IOU’s were in a place that was mostly dry except in torrential rainstorms.  And without secretaries, there was none of the constant whining and bellyaching about crowded conditions, as there had been previously.  Curtains were purchased for the windows, drawn closed, so that no one would have to see the mess inside.

The Ceiling raising solution was one that everyone could be happy about…that is, until the Bizarreville Building Engineer finally insisted on an inspection.  In his report, he pointed out that The Debt was an unstable, overloaded fire hazard that would likely crash to the ground within 12 months.  Naturally, he was fired the next day for his delusional scare tactics, irresponsible analytics, and offensive personal hygiene.

In his aftermath, however, the debate has continued to resound about the quality of the building and structural soundness.  Legislators point out that The Debt has become a tourist attraction, especially by foreign visitors who marvel and love to take photographs of it.  “The Debt has so much more character than that silly leaning tower in Pisa,” one world traveler commented.  “No comparison.  This photo is going up in my Rec Room next to a couple Andy Warhol soup cans.”

Rumors have started that maybe Congress would stop their manic hyper-spending, negating the need to raise The Debt ceiling anymore.  “Hope not,” another shutterbug answered.  “At least not until they add one or two more floors to this wobbly piece of crap.”

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones you would like to be true.

Bizarreville senators have just taken a solemn pledge to stop smoking.  Turns out, most of the senators are smokers.  And the liberal senators are the worst, smoking continuously…lighting off the next one from the butt of the last one.  But now they’ve decided to all take the pledge to stop.

It has always been strange to see these esteemed people conducting themselves in a manner that they know is so detrimental to their future health.  They are all extremely smart people, college educated, most with graduate degrees who fully understand the consequences of near-term pleasure vs. long-term jeopardy.  Yet, for whatever reason, probably aided/abetted by peer pressure from their smoke-aholic colleagues, they continue the bad practice.  Clearly, it has been a strong addiction, a spiral they have been unable to pull out of.

And the Senate rules have not helped them.  Years ago, rules permitted smoking only 10 cigarettes in the Chambers per day.  Then, under pressure, they raised it to 12, then 15, then a pack/day.  They held it at one pack for a few years, driven by the few non-smokers who had trouble breathing the stench, and who tried to interject just a little discipline in these knuckleheads.  But finally, the majority won out, and they raised the ceiling to 1.5 packs, then 2 packs, and recently to 2.5 packs.  Some cynics wonder why they don’t just make the ceiling “unlimited” rather than going through the stupid charade every so often.  “No, we really, really want to try to discipline ourselves,” say Senate leaders as they draft up new rules to go to 2.7 packs.

New incoming freshman senators normally are non-smokers when they arrive.  But within 3 months, they become addicted via inhaling the intense secondary smoke cloud…and seem to quickly lose their sensibility.  A few holdouts have remained non-smokers, and have come to the Chambers donning gas masks to make a point.  Naturally, they just get laughed at.

But now…pressured by the Public who has already given this Class of senators the lowest favorability rating in world history…just slightly above the inmates at Gitmo, and slightly below Kim Jong Il…now they have enacted this Pledge to stop smoking.  This has been a headline story nationwide, but the press release was carefully crafted to say (in the smallest font possible) that there would be some “special circumstances” when smoking would be permitted, “…at times when the Body is under considerable tension and stress…”

Official spokespeople have been vague when asked about specific examples that fit under the Special Circumstance clause.  But inside sources say that anytime anyone is at the podium speaking or anytime the Body is voting would be 2 examples that fit the tension/stress criteria.

Pollsters are early-estimating that this pseudo-pledge could take them below the Gitmo boys.

Disclaimer:  All stories in Bizarreville are purely fictional, even the ones that sound like they are real.