Change. Hope. A sassy, no-nonsense demeanor that gets the job done. All qualities exhibited by Tony Danza on Who’s The Boss. And, somewhat less importantly, by our President elect, Barack Obama.
What’s that crazy Italian up to now? Why, Mr. Obama is planning a massive economic stimulus package, the largest amount of money spent on the American infrastructure since Eisenhower bought the U.S. highway system from the French (known at the time as “Ike’s folly”).
As someone who plans to live well into his forties, I’m a huge proponent of using green technologies as a way to put Americans to work. Just seems like good sense, as long as the Russians appear bent on keeping our nuclear weapons manufacturing sector limp and lifeless.
But I’ve got to say I’m baffled by the amount of money being discussed here. While Barack hasn’t come up with an official number, Congress has estimated the package will be around 600 billion dollars. That’s a lot of Jack In The Box tacos, my friends. About 1.2 trillion, by my count. Which, coincidentally, is how large the national deficit is (in money, not tacos).
But Obama is unfazed. Just like the nation seemed relatively unfazed when we spent a similar amount on bailing out Wall Street. Just like people are now talking about bailing out the auto makers. Which brings me to my question:
When did money become imaginary?
I know we’ve been headed this way ever since we went off the gold standard, but I seem to have missed the actual point at which the number of zeros on a check lost all real world significance.
I think it has something to do with “borrowing from the future,” which, if true, sounds like a great idea to me. After all, I’m not in the future, and don’t plan to ever be, barring a major breakthrough with my LSD-powered time-mo-gig (patent pending).
So, Mr. Obama (I feel I can safely assume you’re reading this, since your last Youtube address was stolen verbatim from my article on Lindsay Lohan’s gooch and funbags), I’d like to use my superior brain to point out some things we ought to be buying with our imaginary money.
After all, when this “save the Earth” thing goes down in flames, we’re going to need a nice terraformed place to put our stuff and/or selves.
And just think of the televised entertainment revenue! Which reminds me–If you’d like to order something with our vast build-up of imaginary funds, feel free to post a note to President elect Obama in the comments, which he reads religiously. But please note, these are not imaginary items, just items of possibly infinite cost.
The man’s not a genie for God’s sake.
When not solving world financial crises, Michael serves as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Firefly, NASA, Space Exploration, The Economy, The Recession. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 4th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Xanadu, that’s not imaginary, it’s just reaaaaaaally stupid.
March 4th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Great, thank for sharing your post, I learned alot from it.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
I want a dick made of lasers! Also some laser proof vaginas.. also another laser dick. And if you say that’s imaginary you’re unamerican.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Is there a reason the fly in Firefly keeps being capitalized?
Anyway, yes, that nathanfillion dollars joke was a pleasant and entirely unexpected joke that I will have to introduce into everyday conversation from this point on.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Hey, great idea! Why not just print up enough money to give everyone a million dollars or so, and then nobody will have to work!
December 25th, 2008 at 1:20 am
FireFly rocks, no one really knows what the fuck I’m talking about it when I’m bringing it up… which brings me to the realization that maybe I should stop bringing it up. God damn you FOX!
Barbama should probably invest about 5 Stupillion dollars into either:
A) The reproduction of Cracked Magazine, and the complete downfall of MAD Magazine… because it sucks, and doesn’t have nearly as many dick jokes as Cracked.
or
B) Bribing FOX to re-release the FireFly series… but act like the events of the movie Serenity never happened because the assholes killed off some key characters.
December 19th, 2008 at 2:57 am
“We’re going to need some music out there in The Black, so I think it’s high time we invested, say, 1.4 nathanfillion dollars on space guitar technology.”
Nothing better than a fellow FireFly fan! *cheers*
I’m all for all of these “stimuli” ideas.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
lets hre aliens to kill off all humans and destroy all modern tech.
solves all the budget and environmental problems in one swipe.
yes the idea was stolen from the recent movie, but its good.
December 14th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Oh my god that last pic of Obama as the genie is priceless!!
But to get to the magical money thing- its basically because the Fed is a private company with a monopoly to create fiat money, which is just money because the government says it is. I just took my economics final Friday so I’ve spent the last 3 months learning about this shit.
You’re totally right (as always swaim) about the gold standard.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Tits budget is a good idea. Think about it, think…
no more (.)(.) just ( . )( . ) a sound investment for your countries future.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
With all this talk of robot soldiers, and robot animals you’ll also need to invest some Zarking moola in a Blade Runner training program.
December 12th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Or you could go spend 8.00 bucks for a pack of Depends for Grandpa. Would be much cheaper.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Can you also invest in robot animals, I hate mine and he pisses me off, they will also have some military use of course. i say invest 60 gujralfgarlillimilliion double dollars into that project. Who knows, we can have robot dogs take care of our old people, cause my grandpa poops his pants.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Mister Obama, please invent a tournament for giant robots to fight, I;m thinkinking bloodpsort, with giant robots. This will circumvent the necessity for war and it’d make awesome ratings man! Seriously dawg, homie manbrodude, thank about it!
December 12th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Mr. Obamanator (”-natar”?), could you perhaps kick-start the lift-New-Orleans-up-with-airships-then-fill-the hole-with-enough-dirt-so-it’s-level-with-the-rest-of-civilization plan? Heck, you could even go above and byond and make NO above and beyond — I’m talkin’ ’bout Space Mountain, with Nahlins as the first Space Dome city (think of the cah-razy hotels; vacation industry gold– no, platinum-mine). Or, y’know, maybe make it an island in a giant water bowl; imagine a giant Sea World, perhaps add a Venice-ian affair with intercity water-street transport. Dolphins are “cars” (or those Frenchy loveboats), orcas are the buses.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Not tits budget but its budget. OOPS!!!
December 11th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Guest_Name, that comment is filled with brillant suggestions.
We did have a super collider project in the United States but congress killed it when it cut tits budget.
As for fruit that tases like cheeseburgers, I hate fruit, but if it tatsted like a cheeseburger I would eat it.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I think we should invest somewhere in the neighborhood of 12.2 Kasquillion dollars to educate people as to why the LHC is fucking awesome.
Also, why the hell can’t we make fruit that tastes like cheeseburgers yet? The nutritional content of an apple combined with the sweet flavor of broiled cow? COME ON!
December 11th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
we should invest $50 katrillion dollars in penis enlargement drugs that actually work. The world is in crisis, people, our average penis size is below 20 inches. This needs to change!
Also rent out prostitutes to every virgin in the whole world. That needs fixing too. I’d estimate about a trillion billion thousand thousand dollars.
December 11th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I think we should spend 10 billion dollars on a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring of supercooled pipes, through which we could send two streams of protons in opposite directions, at roughly 99.999999% the speed of light, and see what happens when the two waves/beams of protons slam into each other,
December 11th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Does that mean all the loose change I’ve ben putting in a 10 gallon “spring” water container is actually worth less than the “spring” water that was in it?
Maybe I should have saved the water and spent the change.
December 11th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
While we’re on the topic of investing ludicrous amounts of money, can I suggest a study– a scientific molecular study? I need to understand the principles behind queues (standing in lines). Why the fuck are there only 3 tellers on duty at lunchtime, in a downtown bank, when everyone needs to do banking on their lunch break? If banks can’t figure out simple things like “when people come in”, then how can they be expected to understand the more complicated issues of financing space-guitars?
To quote the band Prizm, from the song Space Ship Superstar:
“I’m a space ship superstar,
I’ve got a solar-powered laser beam guitar.”
Doesn’t that sound awesome?
December 11th, 2008 at 10:55 am
why cant i post about mother-daughter sex?
December 11th, 2008 at 10:32 am
A normal guitar would indeed not work in space. Well it would work, but it would produce no sound.
I think we need about 20 quintillion dollars in order to start mining rescourses on the moon. Or even better start a moon country, then take over a small country (im looking at you lichtenstine) and thus begin the lunar empire.
Also, we need to do experamints on what happens when you get drunk in space. I must know.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:56 am
# dan Says:
December 10th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Swaim is kinda like Sex With An Impotent Male
——–
Well, Dan, I am sure you would know all about that
December 10th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I’d like Mr. Obama and Science to order me up some animals in different colors. We have phones that are magical movie-showing tablets, and I can’t have a f*cking purple dog?
December 10th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I had about 4 squakillion nerdgasms at the mention of Nathan Fillion.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
What are your talking about Michael ? Big
Red gum?
December 10th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
The pleasure lasts that much longer, baby.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Swaim is kinda like Sex With An Impotent Male
December 10th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I think that if we use South Park’s idea of Internet Money, this would also come in handy
December 10th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
That’s why I’m converting all my dollars into Micronesian stone money. No way that will ever become imaginary!
December 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Ike’s Folly, pretty funny.
But on a more serious note, exactly how much is the national debt
in tacos? I must know, live are depending on it. Dammit Swain , hurry!
December 10th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
sheesh where did my earlier comment go?
December 10th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
???
December 10th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
how many zeros does nathanfillion have?
December 10th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
You seem to have done a pretty good job summing up obama’s campaign promises.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I’ve been wondering the same things lately…
December 10th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Fund my mutant army. Come on, we can host mutant vs robot matches.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:34 am
While we’re at it, let’s just go ahead and start cutting some Quan. It worked for Cuba Gooding Jr.
About 37 Swaimillion should fix everything.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Swaim, I have good news and bad news.
The bad news, the Brazilians are in fact still on Earth, so the global economic crisis still affects them. Unfortunately, 16 Brazilian dollars won’t cover the debt.
Good news, however, they are in fact planning to bring back Battle Bots. And if I read correctly, they ARE outlawing the wedge.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Lmao nathanfillion dollars. And if injecting money into the economy works, why doesn’t the government throw 5billion billion dollars at it?
Curse you retarded government!!
December 10th, 2008 at 8:45 am
That Wedge is a total dick. And Obama is a freakin’ Genie. He can do anything as long as he says “hope” and “change”…kind of like how the Superfriends could do anything against the laws of physics by saying “science” and “molecules”.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Did you ever posted your profile on a celebrity and millionaire dating
site called—– U k w e a l t h y m e n.com— —–I saw your
profile there few weeks
ago. &&&&
December 10th, 2008 at 8:24 am
He should buy every other country in the world so we can all live in peace and harmony or, barring that, civil war.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Look at that son of a bitch sitting there in that picture acting like he’s better than me because he’s been on TV. Fuck you, Wedge, indeed.