Yesterday, I introduced you to John Fleming, a Congressman who laments that he only has $400,000 left over after expenses for his business and other payments. It’s also after, according to his interview, he spends $200,000 to feed his children.
And just what, exactly does someone buy with a $200,000 annual grocery bill?
Groceries for 61 families for a year. On average, a family will spend around $3,240 annually.
571 Playstation 3’s. Of course, if he went to eBay…
200 servings of Serendipity ice cream: gold leaf, infused with Madagascar vanilla, Amedei Porceleana chocolate (the world’s most espensive), chunks of rare Chuao chocolate, exotic candied fruits from Paris, gold dragets, truffles, Marzipan Cherries, a tiny glass bowl of Grand Passion Caviar, fresh passion fruit, orange and Armagnac. You’ll shit gold and class!
The point of this little venture into the world of things no one person could ever hope to own? This whole “class warfare” thing is a pile of crap. You can’t claim we’re hurting someone who has hundreds of thousands of dollars left after running a business, then claim that people who are visibly impoverished are somehow better off if we tax them more and take away the few resources they have to make their lives function.
The entire economic debate right now boils down to one question.
Do we tax those who can afford to give more and still be okay, or do we tax the people who have already been pushed to the brink of poverty and beyond?
My dad once told me, “I’d love to pay half a million dollars in taxes. I’d love to have that kind of money to just throw away.”
There are two levels of wealth. There is the amount of income you need to survive, and then you have the amount of income you need to be comfortable. If you get the two confused, you’re in trouble.
I’d love to have a tenth of what this guy gets as my FULL income. Don’t eat cake in front of hungry people, Fleming. It didn’t end well for Marie Antoinette, either.
Hey, the End is here, right? Might as well jump on the bandwagon. Millions will be left behind, and if you’re the sort of person that likes to have people listen to him or her, this is your chance to shine.
If you’ve got access to a fortified position, plenty of water, and food, you could easily attract looters of all sorts, but why not beat them to the punch by claiming to hear messages from on high and draw some easily-duped fools to perform your every whim? On this one, I’m a bit screwed since water’s already pretty scarce and I live in an apartment, but the rest of you that may live near lakes and rivers and have plenty of firepower can certainly try it out.
All you have to do is be vague enough to people believe what you say is prophesy. If it comes true, it’s divine inspiration. If it doesn’t, it’s a metaphor. Just make it work. Come up with some words and phrases you can all use to mark yourselves as different form the rest of the world. Don’t take crap from anyone and, if someone steps out of line, just threaten to give them to the cannibalistic hordes outside the compound walls.
This one’s for the ambitious, but for the rest of us…
If you have any survival instincts or even camping experience, you can certainly become a walker in the waste. Pack up whatever essentials you may need and start your trip through what will soon be the Empty States of America. You don’t necessarily have to walk, either. Grab a car or, for that extra apolalicious twist, a motorcycle.
Be classy about it…
Get plenty of weapons, food, and supplies. just think of it as a long camping trip. You only have to think a few months ahead, too. We won’t even make it to 2012 if these guys are right.
Personally, I’m all for going to raid the local Academy sporting goods store, stock up on the essentials, and take that cross-country trip I always wanted. Might as well see the sights before October when God himself takes it all back, right? It won’t be some wild, reclaimed landscape, but I’d like to see the major sites. Of course, this could lead to all sorts of shenanigans and adventures, too.
Yay for post-Apocalyptic hijinks!
Eat It Like It Makes You Immortal
We’re all going to kick it in a few months, right? Raid that grocery store and liquor store! If you’re going to put on a few pounds or develop an alcohol addiction, this is the time. Why not spend the last few months in a haze of booze and sugar highs?
Personally, raiding the local Feldman’s and grabbing the $13,000 booze is going to be my goal once everything goes legs up. If I’m going to watch civilization consume itself in an orgy of violence and decadence, I’m going to need some good tequila.
On that same note, grab every movie and TV show you ever wanted to watch but couldn’t. You’ve got time now. I’m going to sit down and go through every season of the original Star Trek, all of Battlestar Galactica, and every Rifftrax I can get.
You’ll have to pace yourself, though. You don’t want to go through the whole thing in one sitting or you won’t be around for October’s big finale.
Play Like a Boss
Safety features? Rules? Why bother? Play the most violent sport you can find with a reasonable chance of survival. Russian Roulette is right out, but something like this might do:
Why not drag-race down the newly-abandoned superhighways? Bungee jump from the Golden Gate Bridge? Play golf in downtown Manhattan and paintball in the streets of LA? It’s all free game now.
Hey, let’s play polo, but with trucks! Hell, you could run the longest D&D game of all time! I’d be up for that. I’d run a game so long and complex that… hey! I could run the World’s Largest Dungeon! Finally, an excuse to stay awake for a week straight, then two more months!
Come October, everything will end. Do whatever you want in the next few months, but in the end, pick a spot with a good view. Most of your major hotels and office buildings will do. Get something that will let you look out into the world one last time and bask in the glry of creation before God comes down and pushes the Off Switch…
Or…
If you’re like me and have people you care about, people you love and love you back, make the most of this time.
It’s very telling whenever someone says the end is coming. If you think your end is near, that you will soon leave this world, your priorities change. You focus on the things that truly matter. Me? I’ll stay with the people I love, read the books I never got to read, and keep writing until I can’t. Then, I’ll throw one big party and watch the world go boom with them at my side.
If aliens land after we’re all gone, they may find that the amount of Mythbusters fan art may place the mustachioed one and the pyro-ginger as deities.
This week marks the anniversary of Jim Henson’s death. I actually learned English with Sesame Street workbooks and learned to love storytelling by watching the Muppets. Nothing will ever replace him, and I thought the world was going to end when Jim left us so many years ago…
Poor Kal got gutted of his super-testicles. So sad...
April 20, 2011
Is there a new movement for directors to take responsibility for their crappy movies? The latest is Bryan Singer, a man I generally respect for his work on the first two X-Men movies, House, and I look forward to see how he directs he adaptation of the 1970’s Battlestar Galactica for the big screen.
Superman Returns, however, was not his greatest moment.
See, he may have been thinking of doing something like the original Superman film with Christopher Kal-El Reeves, but the point is that he sold out without even realizing it. Chick flicks (and yes, I’ll call them that even though I won’t call a woman a “chick”) typically draw much more money than other films. This attraction was the basis for the wonderful commercial for The Expendables that ripped the phenomenon apart.
Is Singer right in that his movie sucked because it tried something different?
Yes. Yes he is. And I thank him for pointing out the atrocity he inflicted onto the Superman mythos.
The truth is that you can only do so much with a franchise before you make it so different as to be unrecognizable. Superman Returns had some destruction, some battles, but nothing really superpowered to fight old Supes. Yeah, you could do something with the philosophy and morality of BEING Superman, the responsibility inherent in being a god amongst men…
But that should be accentuated and pretty much delivered with shots of the Last Son of Krypton going toe to toe with something just as, if not more, powerful than him within a movie full of scenes of destruction that would give Ronald Emmerich a massive destructo-hard-on. Laser blasts searing enemies (robots so Clark won’t go into moral epilepsy), buildings getting tossed like rocks, and a battle royale in the skies to rival the… uhm, “epic” finale of The Matrix trilogy. Let me just let Mike Nelson and the boys say it better than I can.
You can do character stories for a comic book. Some of my favorite moments in the Hellboy films are just talking scenes. The best scenes in Nolan’s Batman films are the ones where we get a lot of tension from either the machinations of Ra’s al Ghul or the Joker. The banter with Alfred’s gold too.
Star Wars is about mythology and space battles. Dropping a bunch of political intrigue did nothing for the prequels other than make them jaw-droppingly awful. .
The Tremors series are always about hometown heroes doing what they with what they got… And they stick to that formula because it works. Think about this: they never get to the main monster attack until about halfway through the film.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a seven-year-long metaphor for life that used fantasy and horror to show us the world, and the new reboot is going to ditch all that and give us… something.
Know your source material. Know how far you can take it and, if you decide to do the Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot version of your world, at least make an effort.
And now, dear reader, to the links!
This must be the WORST anti-drug ad ever. It’s not so much that it looks ridiculous, but that it basically does something akin to warning kids to stay away from strangers because strangers can transport them to Narnia and keep them captive. Not going to happen. Also, it pretty much asserts that being gay is some sort of disease.
