The Return of the Barter System

Ladies and Gentlemen, I've been absent for a few days. I've been insanely busy keeping an eye on those vampires. They haven't really been up to much lately. All I really learned is that any museum owned by a vampire will be attacked and/or damaged about once a month. No, the real research I've done lately is into the economy, holidays, and a possible solution to our financial woes. Let me begin.

Today is Fat Tuesday, or as we celebrate it here in the South, Mardi Gras. Down here, schools let out, banks close, parades fill the streets causing traffic to come to a grinding, screaming, dancing halt, and people party like it's the day before forty consecutive days of anti-fun. Because it is.

The most important thing to take from Mardi Gras in these times, however, is the notion of beads. They're cheap. They're plastic. They're given away for free. Even so, for a few days a year, they're practically legal tender. With beads, you can obtain beer, moon pies, nudity, and so many other things. It's a debauched barter system. But for a few days a year, it works.

My question is, if it's good enough for an entire region of the country, why can't the rest of the nation use it? It could jumpstart the economy. There may be a dollar deficit, true, but surely there must be a bead surplus. Why else would they be thrown out freely at Mardi Gras parades? Further, even though they are free to come by, you can still purchase valuable goods and services with them. It's an ideal new currency: abundantly available without risk of value deflation (at least, not until Ash Wednesday, when everything you can buy with beads becomes something to avoid for the next month and a half).

Can you imagine the financial peace of mind you'll feel when your mortgage payment comes due, and though you have no money in the bank, you know you can simply pay for your land with a bunch of beads? There's even a historical precedent for in the U.S. for buying land with beads, so it shouldn't be too difficult a system to reinstate. What could possibly go wrong?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a parade to go to, and they're throwing out free plastic money on a string.

You have been informed.

10 Unknown Facts About Santa Claus

Ladies and Gentlemen, I missed Ten Facts Tuesday AGAIN. This is just getting ridiculous. I suspect, however, it has something to do with me getting so very very few shifts at work. It's hard to keep track of what day of the week it is when you have no where to be for eight days straight. Regardless, it's time to make up for lost time, and so today we take a closer look at everyone's favorite Jolly Old Elf, Santa Claus or Father Christmas or whatever you care to call him. Today, however, we'll do 12, one for each of the 12 days of Christmas.

10 Unknown Facts About Santa Claus:

1. Santa Claus does not employ children, those are elves. Elves who would look like adults if it weren't for the fact that every elf Santa employs suffered a mysterious injury to their pituitary gland shortly before receiving job offers from Old Saint Nick.
2. Santa's bottomless sack can hold a bag of holding without exploding or tearing dimensional fabric to bits and pieces.
3. Santa Claus's "flying reindeer" are actually pegasuses (pegasi>) with an illusion spell on them. Because, seriously, who steals reindeer>
4. Santa's elves don't actually make the toys. They order them from Amazon. The elves are more or less just glorified warehouse attendants these days.
5. Santa is able to afford all of these toys because the government uses his list to profile future candidates to become covert assassins. Also, he bought a large amount of Microsoft stock at a dollar.
6. Santa Claus wants to exercise and get in shape, really he does. But his publicist keeps telling him that the public would react negatively to a thin Santa.
7. People wonder how Santa flies around the world in one night. "The flying around the world part is easy," he says. "Leer jets can do that. The tricky part is augmenting smart bomb technology to the presents I throw over the side of the sleigh at 20,000 feet."
8. Santa Claus is actually not anti-Semitic. He just knows where he isn't wanted.
9. Santa Claus has a serious foot fetish. Hence, hanging stockings by the chimney.
10. Santa Claus's favorite color is not red, nor does he much like velvet. It's just all they had when he ordered the suit, and though he's tried to get a nice three piece blue pinstripe number, we all know how his publicist feels about change.
11. Santa's wife, Mrs. Claus, is smokin' hot, and resents being portrayed as grandmotherly in the media.
12. Santa's spying on children was brought to court for invasion of privacy against American citizens, but the charges were dismissed because his surveillance is covered by the Patriot Act. 

And now you know there's more to Santa than an inevitable case of diabetes.

You have been informed.

Zombie Facts

Ladies and Gentlemen, last night in New Orleans I learned quite a few things about zombies. Sure, I've watched zombies from afar, mostly watched through a scope before inserting Bullet A through Forehead B, but I've never worked with zombies up close. And for good reason. Zombies are freakin' dangerous.

Last night, however, I did get up close and personal with the zombies. Here are a few things I've learned.

• First and foremost: If you smudge some dark makeup around the eyes and maybe splash a little fake blood around the mouth, you can totally pass for the undead. Or at least I did. If you get eaten by zombies, I can't help you.
• Zombie Easter Bunnies lay zombie eggs. Awesome awesome zombie eggs.
• Zombie Easter Bunnies tend to outnumber Zombie Santas about five to two.
• Zombies don't have to be slackers. They can have worthwhile professions like police officers and strippers.
• Zombies are really good at air hockey. Really. But they choke up at Point 5, at which point you think maybe you'll make a come from behind victory, but no. The zombie finishes rolling over you after giving you a point or two. Zombies don't want to embarrass you with a close out nine-to-nil victory. Zombies are nice like that. And then they try to eat your brains.

Strange I know, but it's all true. Tonight I lurk among the vampires. Let's see what I can learn there.

You have been informed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy Thank the Native Americans for Sharing Their Food so the Pilgrims Wouldn't Die Day!

Ordinarily, on this day, I make a post saying I'm thankful for my friends and family and freedoms and education and stuff, but that's an every year thing, and I think by this point, it goes without saying. Likewise, I've already shared ten facts about this holiday, so further illuminating you on the subject would only give me less to say next year. So today, I'm going to express gratitude for the more unlikely things in my life that helped me get here.

Thank you, Pen-and-Paper RPGs, for introducing me to so many friends and for helping me develop my creativity and social skills growing up.

Thank you, Theatre for letting me be someone else for a while and for introducing me to my fiancee.

Thank you, Calvin and Hobbes, for telling me as I was growing up that it's ok to be smart and a little different.

Thank you, Good Books, for finally breaking me of the habit of literally walking around crying as a small child saying, "I'm bored. There's nothing to do!"

Thank you, Internet, for making it easy to keep in touch with old friends, learn more about new things, and watch amusing videos like this.

Thank you, Movie Theater Job, for giving me so much time to design board games on the clock when business was slow.

Thank you, Readers, for giving me a reason to keep researching.

I think that'll about do it for now. I have cooking to pretend to help with. Now go out, be thankful, eat food, spend time with your family and friends, andget to bed early in a combination of tryptophan overdose and getting ready for the Black Friday sales tomorrow. (except for readers abroad. I'm sorry. I don't think you guys have Black Friday sales tomorrow unless you shop from online American retailers.)

Happy Holidays.

You have been thanked.

10 Unknown Facts About Thanksgiving

Ladies and Gentlemen, we're going to do things a little differently this week. Instead of sharing ten facts about a celebrity, I thought I'd share ten facts about the upcoming holiday. We have some international readers here, and Thanksgiving (at least as we celebrate it in the U.S.) may not be something they know much about. With that in mind, I thought I'd enlighten everyone about a holiday instead of a person.

First, what is commonly known about Thanksgiving. A long time ago, some settlers from England came to America and got slapped around a bit by nature and their own hubris. They had no food that first winter, no way to stave of the bitter cold they hadn't anticipated. So the local Indians (I know, I know. The P.C. term is "Native American" but at the time they were called either Indians or savages, and Indians sounds nicer.) came and gave them food and blankets. Those who survived the winter cultivated the land, again with some help from the locals. At the first harvest, they threw a big feast celebrating. They drank beer and ate venison and gourds and stuff. And then we stopped celebrating it regularly for a few hundred years until, I believe, the mid(?) twentieth century when the fourth Thursday in November became a federal holiday called "Thanksgiving" where we eat way too much food and (in theory) celebrate things we're thankful for. We also gloss over the dead Indians who were later robbed and killed. We're not so thankful these days for that ordeal.

And now we get to the purpose of the post.

10 Unknown Facts About Thanksgiving:

1. Prior to eating, the Pilgrims and Indians laid out some cardboard, plugged an iPod into some speakers, and had a b-boy dance off to see who got to sit at the head of the table.
2. They not only feasted on those foods mentioned above, but they did also feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and other items as well.
3. The image of the cornocopia, or horn of plenty, is actually a misinterpretation of the facts. There was no woven horn filled with foods to feast upon. Rather, Old Man Smythe had a hearing problem, and many people at the table thought it would be fun to try to see what they could throw into his antiquated hearing aid from twenty paces.
4. After eating, the Indian warriors and the strongest of the Pilgrims (mostly the sailors who brought them there) played a game with an inflated pig bladder in which they each tried to get the ball to the other side of a clearing while the opposing team beat them up. Thus was there an Army-Navy game at the first Thanksgiving (a couple of weeks early, sure, seriously. They had work to do. They couldn't have fun every day.)
5. One young Pilgrim girl performed magic tricks for the kids and was used to roast marshmellows that night when it got a little colder.
6. The first Thanksgiving took place at Plymouth, Massachusetts, though after a few too many drinks, Myles Standish declared the village be forever known as "Party Town!" He then fell off the table and vomitted into Old Man Smythe's hearing aid.
7. The Society section of the newspapers called it "the party of the century" and that "everyone was there." This is an accurate statement, as only fifty-three of one hundred twenty Pilgrims survived the first year and if they didn't show up, they didn't eat that day. Also, they didn't exactly party often, so the bar was set pretty low.
   
8. John Smith cooked the deer with his eye lasers. He cooked the vegetables with a cast iron pot.
9. The Indians were not entirely peaceful. They conducted take semi-military action against the colonists after the Pilgrims went to bed. The pantaloon raid lasted seventeen minutes and resulted in 23 bloomer and petticoat casualties and, according to one Indian in his journal, "showed those Alpha Betas that the tri-Lambs rule the school."
10. The days after were generally referred to as "No-thanksgiving" as the overstuffed colonists both turned down leftovers and dealt with e. coli from improperly cooked food. As it turns out, eye lasers are not a Safeserv approved means of cooking.

Enjoy Thursday with your family and friends, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not.

You have been informed.

"Are you suggesting pianos migrate?"

Ladies and Gentlemen, I was surprised to discover this story about a piano found in the middle of the woods. Now, this may seem strange to you, but the more I think of it, the situation is perfectly logical.

My first thought was that the piano was migrating for the winter. It seems logical. Many things migrate for winter. Birds, butterflies, elderly New Yorkers. Why not pianos? En route, it stops in the woods, as birds so often do. This of course raises the question, "Where is it coming from?" Police were unable to answer this question. Perhaps it didn't feel like answering any questions without a lawyer present. I don't blame it. That wooded area was probably private property. To find the answer, we must look at the anatomy and physiology of a piano. Unlike grandmothers, pianos thrive in colder weather. Heat and humidity loosen the strings, making it harder to keep the instrument in tune, and with insurance rates what they are, it is not unreasonable to assume the piano was in transit to colder climes to cut down on visits to the piano man. His time isn't cheap, you know.

The only problem is, well, it doesn't make any sense really. A piano migrating north for winter? Absurd! That would place it in the hot humid south during the hottest and humidest time of the year. And if it already lived in the north, why move at all for winter? And so I abandoned my original thesis and began working on a new one, one upon which I am sure I have struck right (good luck diagramming that clause).


It's the holidays here in the U.S. of A. That's right. Thanksgiving is only a couple of days away. It's a time of family, food, and football if you like that sort of thing. If not, more food and family. And probably fighting. Families fight around the holidays too. What does this have to do with a roaming piano? Everything. The piano wasn't migrating. It was visiting relatives for the holidays. After all, what is a piano made of if not wood? (other than metal). The piano returned to the woods from which it was born, to the glen and glade of its youth to visit its family. You see, this particular piano grew up in that very forest, but during an angsty adolescence ran away for a career in music. However, having never made it to the big show, he grew disaffected with his life. He spent his days entertaining in the suburbs. The suburbs! At least he got to spend time around children. He does so love children, even if they don't always respect him or play gently. He also met his fiancee there, a sweet little bench, who came home with him for the holidays, presumably to meet the family.

It's really not such a big mystery after all once you think about it.

You have been informed.