Monday, January 09, 2006

yet another hilarious title for a post

I've got two ideas for improving the world in small, but significant ways:
  1. Completely stolen from Michael Moore (praise his name!!), but it's a good one so it's worth repeating. Whenever a country decides to go to war, any children of nationally elected politicians over the age of 16 (and military high command while we're at it) are immediately drafted into front-line infantry divisions. Because, if it's important enough to go to war over, it's important enough for your children to die first. In fact, we could cut out the middleman, set up an altar on parliament steps, chuck all the kids on, cut out their hearts and burn them on braziers (the hearts, not the children. Although ...). You know, just like we did in the good out days before those PC-do-gooder-liberal-feminazis took over the country and started outlawing tradition and fun.
  2. I've always been fascinated by the idea of a corporation having the status of a person in our legal system. They are just like a person ... except you can't put them in jail when they do bad shit, like, ooh, kill people, or steal or blow up chemical plants in the middle of India. You can jail the executives of course, and levy fines, but it just not the same. So I propose that we institute jail terms for corporations. And by jail terms, I mean temporary nationalisation. US Robots allows toxic chemicals to spill into a local river, killing all the local wildlife? 5 year jail term. Stocks are frozen, a specially created Govt department moves in and takes over. The department "owns" the corporation for the 5 year term, and has the benefits of that ownership - hiring, firing, taking profits, etc. The focus of the jail term is rehabilitation, and of course making money for the Govt. If the corporation comes out completely fucked up and unemployable afterwards ... well, that's how an awful lot of real prisoners end up now, and no one seems to care enough to do anything about it, except to suggest bringing back the lash ...
Both ideas have holes large enough to fit Jonathan Hunt's wine collection through, but I can dream, can't I?

Speaking of Jonathan Hunt's booze bill (as NZ Herald puts it), can you tell that it's slow news season? Good grief, you can tell the junior morons are in charge when such a ridiculously unbalanced piece gets through the editing process. For christ's sake, why don't you just call the story "Jonathan Hunt is a drunken fat man: Official" and get it off your chest? The Sunday Star Times had a similarly biased headline but made up for it (only just) by making it clear that the wine was for the High Commission, was separate from Hunt's private collection, and most importantly, he hadn't fucking drunk the whole lot in 9 months, which is what you would believe if you read the headline and first sentence of the Herald article.

DPF has a good bunch of commentary of the subject. Unfortunately, Owen McShane, Russell Brown and Aaron Bhatnager all managed to agree with each other, so if the sun turns black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turns blood red, and the stars in the sky fall to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind, and furthermore the sky recedes like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island is removed from its place ... well, don't say I didn't warn you. At least they had the decency to sound apologetic about it.

On other matters, Apathy Jack treats us all like a bunch of children (which, given the quality of our collected bloggage, probably isn't all that unreasonable) and explains the mysteries of NCEA. All I can say is - this is your punishment for having children. All of you.

Returning to that wonderful subject that seems to have taken over my blog recently, someone called elle_kabong has written their own take on the recent furore and has earned my eternal admiration by managing to unite the term "flaccid penises" with the word "snork". Jolly good show.

In other news ...

I've changed my mind, there is a God:
Scientists moot gravity-busting hyperdrive

You always wanted to know, but were afraid to ask:
Did a mob of angry Dutch kill and eat their prime minister?

1 comment:

Psycho Milt said...

Hell, while you're at it do bringing back the lash for corporations, I like the sound of that one even better.

And I'll have you know, our children are our punishment for having children - not NCEA.