10. Man o’ Peace

9. It’s A Grand Old Nag

8. No Way José

7. Artificial Hip

6. Save-Your-Money

5. Mucilage

4. Stumblebum

3. Tripod

2. Chris Christie

1. Wrong Way Corrigan
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

10. “Somebody just now told me that taxes are due every year.”

9. “I was working around the clock trying to revive the Herman Cain campaign.”

8. “I’m deathly afraid of 1040 paper cuts.”

7. “I miss prison.”

6. “Fill out a tax form?! I can’t even program my VCR!”

5. “After I claim all the voices in my head as deductions, it turns out they owe me money!”

4. “I was hoping I could barter for what I owe with sexual favors.”

3. “All my calculations were lost when somebody turned over my Etch A Sketch.”

2. “Being in the top one percent, I thought I was exempt.”

1. “I’m still waiting for this Nigerian prince to e-mail me some money.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

We were in an ice cream parlor the other day, and my son was looking at some old-time paintings on the wall. One was a decades-old picture of a sundae with a price tag: 10 cents. Despite my efforts, he couldn’t comprehend it — which may not be difficult to imagine since my grasp of macroeconomic issues is wanting . I had similar success explaining to him that gas, the stuff that makes our car go, was once a quarter.

Of course, we’ve all been complaining about high gasoline prices for years, and there’s been all kinds of lamenting, whining, some saber rattling (and even some saber wielding). But as I’ve watched my children’s lives overlap with constant war in oil-rich parts of the world, I wonder how much we care about conserving this energy resource. I mean, how much, on a day-to-day basis, do we really care about the people who are fighting overseas for our lifestyle?

Some years ago, I conducted a little driving study that I have since reproduced several times with similar results. The original study was prompted during a trip from Washington to South Jersey on I-95 and I-295 when I became disenchanted with the radio and tired of deciphering peeling bumper stickers.

When I left the D.C. area, I made sure to maintain a speed between 65 and 70 mph. Then (and, admittedly, this is the part my wife says makes me certifiable), at eight different one-minute intervals, I counted the vehicles I passed and the vehicles that passed me.

The results: Vehicles that passed me: 37. Vehicles I passed: 2.

If you calculate this out for the 150 minutes I was on the road, about 700 total vehicles passed me. But although I passed two vehicles in my “official” count during the time intervals, I don’t need to calculate that number out for the whole trip, because I was able to count easily  the total number of vehicles I passed because there were so few of them. In that entire 150-minute trip, I only passed nine vehicles. Of that nine, four of them were part of a caravan of campers, two were pick-up trucks that had just limped onto the highway from the shoulder, and one was a woman cruising proudly in a new SUV.

Everyone else blew by me: lumbering rigs, wimpy minivans, cute couple-driven SUVs, motorcycles, new cars, old cars. And while, for research integrity, I tried to stay around 70 mph, I admit I occasionally succumbed to an inferiority complex and nudged it up to 75 mph, but to no avail; everyone still left me in the dust.

While cars vary in efficiency, 55 is still a good number for most, and no cars are fuel efficient at 80 MPH – not to mention the reduced fuel efficiency of the many folks who came screaming up behind me, slammed on their brakes, tailgated for a while, and then accelerated past.

One good reason I heard for higher speeds on interstates is that higher speeds (and speed limits) allow drivers to reduce the time of long trips, thus reducing driver fatigue and accidents. But, good researcher I am, I noted that almost every license plate I saw during my trip was local to the three small states I traveled in: Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware. It’s tough to fall victim to fatigue in a drive across Delaware on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

The irrefutable conclusion: We can’t be hurting too badly, because we individually don’t care one bit about conserving gas.

So the question may be this: Should our government take measures to address high fuel prices? Keep in mind that even though lots of people lately say they don’t want government in their lives, these are the same people who any time a cyclone hits their house or they have to fill up the tank of their riding lawnmower clamor for government aid.

If our government maintains the representative spirit the Founding Fathers intended, in which elected officials serve as wise leaders to guide us not-so-bright masses, then our government should jack up the price of gas through a tax to help curb our wasteful, careless ways. Because as my study proves (and I encourage you to reproduce it), we do almost little individually to conserve fuel.

But if government should act based on the opinions of the people, then as far as the gas issue goes, the people have spoken. We need to get places in a hurry, and we don’t mind burning extra gas to do it, so government officials, you better help us get our hands on this resource, and you better make it as painless as possible.

That’s one of the great things about being American: Even when you don’t do one thing to help yourself, often somebody comes along and helps you out anyway.

10. His last client was Gary Busey

9. It takes him 45 minutes to figure out his tip at the Hair Cuttery

8. He claims bajillion is a real number

7. He promises to visit you in prison

6. When you get a closer look at his ‘calculator’ you realize he’s just playing Angry Birds

5. He says he spend a lot of time consulting with his own tax adviser: Johnnie Walker

4. When you point out a math error, he says, “Ahhh, five of one, half a dozen of the other.”

3. He claims your refund is actually supposed to go to him

2. He does his calculating in the nude, so he can count to 21

1. Before every number on your tax form, he puts one of those ‘more or less’ squiggles
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

March Madness concludes, an event handled something like an outbreak of typhus in workplaces across the country; treated with quarantine and let to run its course. Recent racial tensions notwithstanding, it culminated in a charmingly integrated riot. But if it weren’t the parade of paid amateurs in their skivvies, it would be some other diversion; perhaps the buttons on our shirts or better, the buttons on Kim K’s shirt. Are the flags still at half-staff? Must be for Whitney, national treasure that she was. It couldn’t be that there are caskets burdened with the bits of American soldiers pouring into New Jersey as they have never been lowered for that yet. There is a drought across the nation. It is a drought not of water, though that, too. What we thirst for, seek and find absent in every dusty bucket on every rusted hook is seriousness for the serious matters; sobriety in the face of sobering events. We desperadoes are a small and vilified minority. Instead of frank discourse we meet the mouthpieces of vested interests or free-lance mouthpieces without portfolio who, on speculation, ape the paid press agents. For any who question the state of affairs, whether it is the public debt or private vice there is one ready rejoinder with all the insight and subtlety of a vuvuzela; lol.

A bit of pretentious jargon for the semi-literate, you know what it means; laughs out loud. Yes, the one thing that sets us apes above other critters, humor, has been weaponized. This is no modern phenomenon but it has taken a peculiarly perverted turn. Cicero stood nearly alone against the blood-soaked whoremonger, Marc Antony and while Antony had his legions and fierce temper, Cicero had only his tongue to employ at close quarters and his pen for effective fire at range. Antony, the gold-plated bandit, got the worst of it. One could even say Cicero was triumphant as he forced Antony to hang Cicero’s head in the Senate by that spear of a tongue and nail those delicate hands to the door. With that everyone knew the Senate was closed for business, while open for charades. This was what Antony did NOT want. Advantage Cicero. But while the old knight certainly dished out insult and obloquy it was not simple mockery, rather a calling to proper accounts.

Like so many other conventions of antiquity, the rules of civility versus mockery have been intentionally upended for tactical reasons. You hear of Alinsky, friend of Lucifer and at least philosophical antecedent to Obamaism. His Rules for Radicals explicitly favored mockery, derision, even sexualized and racially antagonistic assault for tactical reasons. He hoped to drive all decent people from politics in disgust, nearly a Mission Accomplished. And by politics he did not mean merely the high offices or offices at all. Alinskyism is to be applied across the board. Enemies on the Right, clearly are most constantly targeted but also are uncertain allies; mostly those with principled stands from yesterweek that are now inconvenient. If there can be anyone to the Left of the Progressive in office there is a slight readjustment of the sights. Instead of those parties being attacked it is the daft notion that there is legitimate connection to the more palatable actors. Observing that the President alternately embraces and then denies policies and people from the ghetto, draws fire. It is government by denunciation; no innovation there. The Soviet Script is what we have, the one taken to its logical conclusion in North Korea where, as we know, it is not confined to the ruling class but turns the life of everyone under its sway into hell. To be damned or a tormentor are the only choices.

Is there so much danger in unthinking and insincere laughter? Oh, you betcha. The laugh precedes the attack of the monkey horde. It is a quick banishment at the least, even when superficially kindly. Oh, honey. You just don’t understand, this fifteen percent we are taking from your check, it’s for your own good…. or someone’s anyhow. And you will hardly miss it! You are either child or invalid, honest laborer though you be. Your puerile complaints only warrant lolz.

But recall that some plagues fall on all houses, Pharoah’s not incidentally. There has been a turn of the worm. Setting: Chambers of the Supreme Court. Players? You know except for the poor fool tasked with the monologue. Verilli is his name and he showed up at a comedy thinking it was drama. The result made Keystone Kops look like Othello. Each “argument” was transparent, self-contradictory, tautological and thin. The Solicitor General, Verilli, was the object of open, spontaneous and quite sincere laughter. The availability of THREE friendly refs did not help much even when they took his foul shots for him. As we know, Kagan sat in Verilli’s seat as SG moments ago. Indeed she was the architect of his case! But even with the active intervention of her and Sotomayor and the recently treasonous Ginsberg, Team O could not put a point on the board. They have come to the Final Four in golf cleats and with cricket bats, tearing up the floor and cracking a few heads but only exposing the reality of their preparations to a gaping audience.  And no, swapping out Clement for Verilli  did not help.

In somber open court neither Justices or witnesses could help but laugh out loud! This isn’t quite unprecedented, a term we had best get intimate with, but it is fairly close. Could there be a shift in the wind that turns the lolz against their masters? In the press room, certainly laughter has long time precedent but so does the reflexive credulity with which those pressies receive any pronouncement from their favorite President ever! But precedent isn’t everything. A bored 1%er actually asked Press Sec Jay Carney to explain Joe Bidens’s assertion that Obama taking out Osama was the greatest event of the last 500 years. Preemptive hilarity buried the sad-sack Carney before he could taste the churn in his stomach. But it’s not his fault. He is sent out to defend the indefensible no less than Virelli or Clement or even Kagan when she presses her own briefs from behind the bench. It is all absurdity and nothing more. Laugh out loud at these clowns. Laugh out loud at their supporters.

Any comic will tell you, people want to laugh but are afraid. This also is a large element of the Alinsky strategies. Laugh first, laugh loudest and never cease; this is the gambit arrayed against you. You have seen it a thousand times. The laugh is deployed much like The Hand; as a barrier, a trench. A wall. But it’s fake. Genuine laughter shatters it all to hell once it gets started and you polite, friendly little farmers and ranch-hands out there should know, it’s already begun. Alright, watching Carney explain Biden might be Comedy Gold but it’s just too easy, isn’t it? Biden, pitched as some sort of elder statesmen in ’08 is well known as the stupidest man in public office; a high bar. But on more substantive issues the Plague of lolz has also struck at Carney’s podium. Last September there was a nasty outbreak on the subject of the President’s “jobs program”. The question alarmingly implies that it has been a bit of a bust. Carney rises to the occasion but even his friendliest of audiences rises back in guffaws.

That is bad news indeed. Not only are the pressies the most gullible of demographics; the most passionate of believers in Hope and Change, they are also vital cogs in the Obama Machine. The cogs are missing teeth. Returning to Obamacare, reliable Leftie and less reliable legal critic, Jeff Toobin, contemporaneously declared the Obamacare oral exam a “trainwreck”, modifying that the next day to “planewreck”. And he laughed, oh yes he did, that rat, at the hapless government attorneys face-planting as they defended legal precepts that HE had published with approbations just weeks ago. If Toobin is the mouth of Obama-friendly legal trends, and he is, he has just turned on his comrades and joined the other side of the dodge-ball field. This rodent knows a losing team when he is on one. Well, after halftime.

So the friendly arbiters are laughing. The contract retainers are laughing. The public is laughing. The Court is laughing. What could be worse? Only that now even their enemies are laughing. Behold the rehabilitation of Sarah Palin. SARAH PALIN! NBC employed her in a bit of interoffice politics to spite Katie Couric making this a media civil war that has done gone nukular! It’s the Scorched Earth Doctrine with Palin in the rubble smirking that smirk they hate so much. If that isn’t an infectious bit of drollery you must actually BE Katie Couric. But Palin has been benched for years, what else you got? We have also a certain Paul Ryan, the designated boogie man on maters fiscal and medical since Boner has been too accommodating to play that role. You may remember that Ryan was the fellow unsubtley portrayed as throwing granny over a cliff in her wheelchair, another example of Alinksytuned humor. Well, looks like the hoot is on the other foot. The denunciations of Ryan are the same… maybe worse, but now as the mood of the room has changed, it is Ryan who chortles.

And there is one last bit of bad news from the Humor Front. For years now, from the beginning, there is one institution that has been at least neutral, contrary to their habits, inclinations and personal interests. That would be the Pros, the mercenaries… the paid comedians. As showbiz types they are mostly liberal and mostly loyal to Obama if not the Democrats overall. Oopsie. The target is just too big and the rewards too great. Obama has now been officially thrown in the tank with all other Presidents preceding him. This development is unprecedented, at least for him, and as with his machinations in the Supreme Court, he seems to have never considered things might turn against him and has no contingency. Dana Carvey turns his fire not on Obama in particular but neither does he give him quarter. That’s enough. That’s plenty. No messiah, certainly no political messiah, can survive as just another dope like Reagan or W, can he?

I hope you laughed at that one.

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Obama.

Obama who?

President Obama!

lol

We might think that people never have to pay for anything, with all the things we hear are paying for themselves. Most times, when someone says, “It pays for itself,” the proper response is, “No, it doesn’t.”

I know someone who buys annual memberships at several aquariums and zoos because doing so only costs a little more than the one-day pass. He once told me that if you go to the Baltimore Aquarium just twice in a year, the yearly pass “pays for itself,” which is why he has bought the yearly pass. Baltimore is a four-hour drive from where he lives, but no matter. He is determined to have his pass pay for itself, so he loads the kids into the car and takes a second trip to Baltimore within the year. Not to do so is to have paid for a yearly membership when only a one-day pass was needed. Driving to Baltimore costs money for gas and tolls, but if you add it all up, as I’m sure he has, it still costs less than paying for two separate day passes to the aquarium. This math convinces him that the yearly pass pays for itself. If he goes to the aquarium a third time in the year, it will pay for itself even more. If he goes ten times, the yearly pass pays for itself so much it’s practically free.

Let’s be clear — if you spend any money you were not going to spend already, then the “yearly pass” or “buy-one-get-one-half-price” does not pay for itself unless you were bound to buy that additional item in any case. It might be an excellent value, you might judge it to be money well-spent, but you don’t come out with the same amount of money at the end that you had before you bought the extra item or extended pass — you don’t save money compared to another option that you were considering. That is what it means for something to “pay for itself.” You could simply not drive to the aquarium a second time that year and spend less money. (All of this is not even considering that aquariums and the like offer these inexpensive season passes in part because they know some people will not come back a second time in a season after paying extra for the season pass, and also because the real money is in the soda and theme park crap they sell people when they do come back — getting you through the gates is what they’re after.)

So what does pay for itself? My lawnmower. I spent about $250 to buy it. I am willing and able to do the work and put in the time (yes, time is money), and my initial cost of $250 paid for itself the first season. Lawn-cutting services charge $35 a week to mow my yard. Owning the mower and mowing my own lawn paid for itself after about 7 weeks. I spend around $35-$50 a year for gas, and maintenance and repair is averaging $50 a year, but it still would cost me a lot more to hire someone to mow. Just letting the grass grow wild is not an option, so I am bound to spend some money. The mower paid for itself compared to the option of having someone do it for me.

Of course, if we want to be literal about it, the mower didn’t pay a damn penny for itself. It doesn’t even have a bank account. I paid for it. But we’re not being literal about it. So the mower paid for itself in one season. Sadly, the aquarium membership, that cheap bastard, never does.