Day: March 9, 2009

The McBournie Minute: My package is over-stimulated

Unless you have been walking around with your fingers iny your ears going, “La la la la la!” for the better part of a year (and if you are, how did you click on this?), you probably know that there’s something very, very bad with the economy right now. As any Republican will tell you, it’s all President Barack Obama’s fault, but as any Democrat will tell you, it’s all President George Bush’s fault, and Nancy Pelosi is really very nice in person.

So yes, there is a recession on, and it’s been on for a while now. Technically, it’s been on since the end of 2007, we just didn’t know it untul much later. In any case, consumers are scared. Maybe it’s that people keep losing their jobs, maybe it’s that the news media likes to keep showing scary graphics with loud noises, but there’s a panic.

In order to help us in this time of economic downturn (that’s what we’re calling it, right?), companies have launched ad campaigns that do their best to remind us that spending money on their goods/services is way more responsible than saving money. They all offer various “stimulus packages” like they think it’s funny. Midas has their own version for car maintenance, and that one may be an OK claim, because it saves money in the long run. Car companies, restaurants, you name it, they all have their own spin on it. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: My package is over-stimulated

What’s in your wallaby?

An Australian couple was awakened in the middle of the night by an unwelcomed intruder, a kangaroo. The kangaroo did not choose the front door, but in a more sensible fashion, Chuck Norrised the bedroom window to break in. It is clear that the animals are getting desperate and are turning to robbery for monetary purposes.

We however don’t know what part of this story is dumber, the fact that the animals are breaking into houses, or that the man thought the kangaroo might be a “lunatic ninja.”

Teacher made us do it

My high school teachers went kind of like this: the over-eccentric science teacher, boring math teachers that clearly hated their job, social science teachers that spent more time being pregnant than in class and a computer teacher that lived up to our nickname for her (“Stinky”).

High school art teachers in Japan? Force teenagers to wear maid costumes. Hope you’re enjoying that thought, nerds.

The high school teacher from Odate, Akita Prefecture forced a female student to wear a maid’s costume and made other students take pictures of her. He put the pressure on a third-year student with a threat on her grades. If she didn’t wear a maid outfit during club activities, she would receive no academic credit for her language class. So the 18-year-old was forced to wear the outfit in school. The 51-year-old teacher made other students take pictures of her, too. Clearly, it was all done for photographic purposes to demonstrate the figure and form of the human body.

Clearly.

Smoke gets in Va. smokers’ eyes

Smokers in Virginia are certainly not crying today as their rule over restaurants and bars comes to a measured end.

Governor Tim Kaine will sign a bill today that will restrict all statewide smoking to little petting zoos with separate ventilation and, presumably, wait staff. This is the toughest anti-smoking law to date … in any of the five tobacco-producing states.

The Guys give this new law exactly three days before indignant Virginia smokers (including those who smoke Slims) invoke Brown v. Board of Education to contest their new “separate but equal” status.

Sailing really blows

Recycling makes you feel good about yourself. Why? Because you can look around at all the other A-holes and tell yourself you care more about the environment than they do.

In truth, it doesn’t do much to save the environment, and it doesn’t stop you from sitting in traffic in your SUV with the heat or A/C cranked. But for some reason, people really get off on it. One such person is David de Rothschild (yes, of those Rothschilds), who is building a sailboat out of over 12,000 recycled plastic bottles. When the ship is built, he plans to sail it from San Fransisco to Australia, because it’s a challenge.

However, when it sinks, it will be just another example of plastic killing fish in the ocean.