Of The People, By The People, For The People... And All Taxable
I think the first thing I'm going to buy is a pony. I don't know why, but I've always wanted one. I'm going to call him "Mister Chesterton Gerrymander the Fourth" and I will teach him prancing and trotting and that thing they do when they count with their hooves. Someone told me they can do that, but I don't really see what they do with figures higher than four.

I will feed him apples and hay and brush his shiny coat with a brush I would buy especially for that purpose. I will purchase an antique old-timey phonograph on which I will play for my pony Mahler and Brahms because ponies are known, despite their jolly appearance, to be hostile to modern digital recording techniques and given to melancholy that can only be soothed by 19th century high-class dirges. Nothing that gives so much happiness can retain much for itself.

I have no room for a pony on my property at the moment, so clearly, I will have to move. That's fine because as we know, money will be no object. I'll find a fine piece of bottom land with a meadow and a hill and a little creek running through it. The soil will be rich and dark and tended by people who don't speak English whom I pay less than minimum wage. From the good earth they will raise radishes and beets and carrots and potatoes and other types of underground-growing root vegetables so as not to exacerbate my shrubbery phobia. And I will pull these vegetables from the ground, I will taste them and I will remember that I hate radishes and beets and I will become unreasonable and arbitrary and all the garden staff will be fired. And the very next day I shall rehire them (at a slightly reduced rate) because rich people are given to fits of inexplicable pique and all those who work for their money are subject to the turbulence of our whims.

The servants shall have a servant's house with carpeting and air conditioning, but only basic cable. I will be saving them from themselves lest shows like Entourage corrupt them into wanting to become movie stars and make lots of money and not tend to my beet garden. And because the lord and master must live in a home at least 300% the size of the servant's quarters, I shall build for my family and myself a grand domicile with wings and a courtyard and a foyer all filled with fountains of statues of fat little boys peeing into things and we shall fill them with not water but with real urine from real fat little boys that we shall keep out back in our day camp we shall build specifically for that purpose. The boys shall be well treated and educated as much as we deem necessary. But really, how much algebra do you need to know to stay fat and pee into things? In my case, almost none.

And everyday I shall have chocolate and strawberries and fresh cream and barley and chestnuts and those little tiny grapes. And I shall have foie-gras and frog legs and calf's brains and caviar and I will reject them all as disgusting and loathesome, but no one will think me uncouth or vulgar because of it because you can only reasonably run the social risk of rejecting those things when you are filthy, stinking, unquestionably wealthy.

My state has sued all of the major automakers on my behalf because they are trying to kill me with global warming and pollution. Big fat check coming, you watch. Sure, we have to split the settlement 50,000,000+ ways, but we're talking car money here. These are the people who charge you $1,000 for an AM/FM cassette radio. A bottomless pit filled with cash. Well, you know, as much as you can fill something without a bottom.

I see what all those people got when they smoked for years and years and years and then got lung cancer and then sued Phillip-Morris. Pay day. They had to spend it fast, but still. Just in terms of scale, think of the number of people who a) drive and b) breathe. It's staggering. I can't wait.

And all these years I was so critical of the state and local governments for not spending a single meaningful dollar on public transportation of any kind. Now I know: it's Detroit's fault. Well done, California. Way to sucker them in with a total lack of vision or planning or even enough basic transportation infrastructure to sustain the population levels of 15 years ago, let alone the present. More cars on the road! I get it now. I see what you were doing. It all seemed so wrong until I finally realized I was inching closer to my lifelong pony dream.

Sue away. As long as I get my check, I'll totally vote for... whatever that state attorney general guy's name is.

Before any disagrees, I know I'm getting a check. I know it. Otherwise, what would be the point of the lawsuit if not to directly benefit those on whose behalf it is being ostensibly filed? Don't be so cynical. You'll lose your world-weary mistrust when I post the first pictures of Mister Chesterton Gerrymander the Fourth.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.8


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:11 AM