If ever I run this town, even before I take revenge on my enemies I will have a statue commissioned. A bronzed Anne Cox-Chambers already man’s the traffic island outside my front door, permanently enjoying a newspaper as only an owner of one could do. Around Underground there are life-size bronzes from the ’30s and 1890s. Naturally we have a smattering of Civil War heroes (or villains), some artsy friezes and a Phoenix both in abstract and figure. There is at least one missing. The subject has not been gone long enough to become historic but I remember and will see her commemorated. She was always in the company of statues when I saw her, usually Herman Talmadge. She stood quite nearly as a statue; an elderly woman, clearly a nifty number from the Mad Men era would stand unmoving in a parka and gloves in the winter, in a sundress with a wet hanky on her head in summer, holding a stack of leaflets in each arm. She didn’t hand them out. She couldn’t have since both hands were full, the half-reams perfectly her cubit. Sometimes they were single sheets and sometimes it would be a stapled pair. Did I mention the rocks? She also had a rock on each pile to act as a paperweight. Around her neck hung a small sandwich board explaining in meticulous print how the private ownership of land was the source of near all of man’s troubles. [Read more →]

Tags: if I were king..., politics & government by Ken Watson
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What would you think of a monetary system with NO borrowing, NO taxation and NO reserves? It is simplicity itself. When the government needs some dough to build a fighter jet or provide orthodontia to a retired race horse, they just print it up. All bonds will be retired, on schedule and as issued (except TIPS, we’ll have to do something about them) but no more will be sold. Taxes? A dusty anachronism. And since this is fiat money, not based on crappy Italian cars but rather on the forceful declarations of government, there is no need to keep gold or silver stocks as the US currently does. We will call this Infinity Money, an appealing brand name. Inflation? Oh hells yeah! Hyperinflation? Perhaps so but now in the computer age the handling of numbers forty digits long is no great chore and as in the Weimar Age, once the numeric string is too long and the tail end isn’t worth a single grape we just cut off a dozen or so zeroes from all accounts on a date certain, I’m thinking midnight every Friday so you can restart the melting of your valuables fresh on Monday. This solves many, many problems. For one, we are constantly told that the billionaires and krillionaires are maliciously keeping trillions in their vaults so they can lounge among the greenbacks and deprive Danish Lit majors of productive employment. No more. Anyone who hoards our un-earned money will see it evaporate like dry ice so high-risk, high-growth investments will be the only recourse. The consumer likewise will not keep his money in his pocket because his pocket (or more accurately, his card) now has an extra-dimensional rift within it that will empty out the value at the pace of a flushing toilet. Consumer spending spikes. Investment spikes. Savings? Well, there won’t be any actual savings but there will be investment in goods and services. It is said in Weimar Berlin that the streets were awash in cocaine and prostitutes of all descriptions. Now that is an enviably energetic economy! [Read more →]

Tags: if I were king..., money by Ken Watson
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If I were King, I’d decree that no restaurant could put Swiss cheese on anything without noting so prominently on the menu, in bold type in at least a 14-point font, and without also notifying the customer placing the order, just in case the customer didn’t see the warning on the menu. Each restaurant or deli would have to tell any customer ordering a sandwich that had Swiss cheese, “By order of the King, I am required to inform you that this item comes with Swiss cheese. Are you sure that you want Swiss cheese?” In my kingdom, no one would ever have to scrape melted Swiss cheese off of a panini after they got home and discovered the offending fromage.

Also, if I were King, olives would only be permitted to be included in a menu item if specifically asked for by a customer. Olives would never appear, without warning, all chopped up in anyone’s salad, in tiny pieces that can’t be fished out. 

My kingdom would be a humane, truly just society. So let it be written. So let it be done.

Tags: if I were king..., recipes & food by Scott Stein
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If I were king, I would ban music that sounds like my phone. I was driving home today from a meeting and had the radio on. I don’t know what song it was. Something I’d never heard before. Then my phone rang, and I turned off the radio and answered it, thinking it was my wife calling. But there was no one there. I shouted “Hello?!” into the phone like a demented jackass, over and over, before hanging up. I was sure I’d been called and disconnected. Then I turned the radio back on. The ringing returned. It was the damn song. If I were king, I would decree: Hey, music people, cut that shit out.

Tags: if I were king... by Scott Stein
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Ok, enough already. 

Enough with malls putting up Christmas decorations before Halloween. 

It’s insulting enough to somehow suggest cheap tinsel horns and stars* mounted to parking poles will swing my attention away from driving past the mall enough to make me realize, “hey, I need to shop,” if I didn’t already. It’s insulting to think it’s OK for giant ornaments strung from the rafters to take precedence over and crush the meaning from my kids’ (and my own) anticipation of Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Anyone remember Thanksgiving decorations?

Halloween is kinda silly, though, so I’ll say this: Let me and my children look forward to Thanksgiving — a holiday that holds some sentimental nostalgia — without steamrollering it into a mental wasteland by making my kids think they’re getting toys any second now.

If they’re so effective, Malls, then just leave them up year-round. I suppose there has been some psychological study that says it’s effective. But I bet they haven’t figured out what happens if you just beat people over the head with it. I’d love it if everyone got jaded and went back to bed instead of waiting in lines at 4:30 in the morning to buy this year’s Kick Me Elmo.

I know, you say, “But you don’t have to shop at the mall. It’s free speech.”** And I don’t, and it is. 

But we do go to the mall. It’s still in very poor taste.

Appoint me King. I’ll fix it.

*Yeah, there’s Channukah too. But let’s face it: we don’t get overrun with giant dreidels. Not as much, anyway.

**Maybe you don’t say this. Someone does, though. 

Tags: diatribes, if I were king... by Andrew Turner
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