The Saturday Spindle

I like Scott’s occasional “spindle-clearing” posts, since I have the same problem of noteworthy items piling up and not enough time to give them each their due in separate short posts.  So here’s a few items sitting in my In-Box at the moment:

1.  So let’s see if I understand the big media transaction of the last couple of weeks, which apparently goes like this: Qatar sells us oil and gas and petrochemicals—all very useful things—and we sell them back . . . CurrentTV?!?!  Sounds to me like we’re still exploiting the “developing” world.  Time for a new bumper sticker: End Al Gore Imperialism!  (Hey Qatar, have I got a deal for you.  There’s this thing called MSNBC you could get real cheap. And Newsweek is still available.  I hear “Brooklyn Bridge Media Group” is also for sale.)

2.  Biden-mania: Did Slow-Joe really say “there’s no silver bullet for gun violence”?  Yes, he really did.  Please please Joe—you have to run for President in 2016.  We’ll need the laughs after four more years of Obama.

3.  Speaking of laughs, have you caught wind of the latest new genre of comedy writing: spoof Amazon product reviews.  It’s been going on for a while now, but in recent weeks seems to have passed the proverbial tipping point, to where there’s plainly an active community of people who live just for this.  Check out the reviews for the banana slicer, the Playmobil Security Checkpoint (recommended to ages 4 – 7, in other words, ideal for real TSA agent training), rabbit meat, David Hasselhoff records (oh my!) and even BIC pens.  The banana slicer, rabbit, and Hasselhoff records are real, but the security checkpoint is a fake product—Fake, but accurate!!, as the old saying goes.  Still, here’s the first review:

I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said “that’s the worst security ever!”. But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.

The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I’ve heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I’ll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).

4.  We should be for the $1 trillion coin idea.  Here’s why: Lots of people say that even if legal, the markets would react very adversely to adding another trillion dollars to our debt in this way.  But why should the markets feel any better if we add another trillion dollars to our debt by a vote of Congress?  The trillion dollar coin gambit would clarify that we’re nowhere close to getting serious about our debt crisis.  Better if the markets speed up the moment of reckoning with some stern signals now.  (This item, by the way, is not a joke.)

The Weekly Winston will be up this afternoon.  Latest Green Weenie tomorrow.

A truly instructional toy.

Reviewers are disappointed the set doesn't come with this function

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