haiku 10 Jan 2019

He swallowed his pride

And queued for a second job

Just to pay the bills

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

on taxing horses

In keeping with efforts to make up for taxes that are no longer being collected due to technological innovation, the U.S. Congress is debating a novel solution. Colloquially known as Horse Obsolescence Recovery Sequester Enactment, or H.O.R.S.E., HR-23.9947 (F) will require motor-vehicle-owners to pay a tax on each ‘horse’ of ‘horsepower’ their car or truck can muster.

“Not that long ago,” said Thorsten Hilddebrandt, congressman from New York (D), “one would have needed to employ scores of groomsmen and stable-boys to keep two hundred horses healthy, strong, and ready to go at a moment’s notice. With modern automobiles, however, all of those jobs and tax revenues vanish.” An apparently bipartisan issue, H.O.R.S.E. seems to be gaining traction on both sides of the aisle. “The tax burden must fall equally, no matter if people choose to drive a car or ride a horse,” said Barbara D. Geirhoff-Ferd, a Republican congresswoman from Florida. “Taking care of horses was a good, taxable job for many unskilled and lower-class individuals. America can no longer afford to let people who drive cars not shoulder their fair share of society’s burdens.”

Unsubstantiated rumors indicate that laws will soon be passed to steeply tax a wide array of cell-phone applications that take taxable jobs away from human calculators, map-makers, telephone-switchboard personnel, camera operators, board-game makers, notepad and pencil manufacturers, FM radio broadcasters, astronomers, filmmakers, and many others.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑

bird gets job

Rather than stomping around all day through the tall and the short grasses in search of grubs and worms and mites and whatnot, local great-tailed grackle (quiscalus mexicanus) finally broke down and got a job at the “Cruising” Kroeger's on Montrose. “This is so much better than flapping around in the rain and the heat and yelling at people all day long,” said the bird while hustling to re-stack a pile of grapefruit. “I won't have benefits for a while, but I can use the water-fountain anytime I want and my coworkers aren't all total assholes, unlike the motley bunch I used to hang with, out there.” To punctuate his sentence, the bird cocked his head toward the windows, blinked twice with his beady yellow eyes, and sounded his typical, electronic-sounding call. “We don't really miss that guy,” said a cardinal the grackle used to hang with before he got his job in the produce section. “We all know why he broke down and joined the rest of the working stiffs: he was getting soft, and just couldn't hang with the big boys, anymore.” Since our interview, the grackle has been seen moving into his own apartment and dating someone of his own species.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

man proves worth

Despite a few years of recession-induced unemployment (during which time he nevertheless maintained eight different blogs each day and wrote hundreds of poems and essays), local self-loathing mendicant Reginald Augustus Steele finally proved his worth to his capitalist overlords. “For a while there, we thought he was a goner,” said billionaire poop-nugget Frances Hyacinth Warbucks, founder of the Buy&Cry retail empire and ultimate recipient of Mr. Steele's meager credit card debt payments. “And with Congress about to pass laws making it a crime to not pay one's financial debts, we were hoping to move Steele into one of our privately-owned prisons. But, alas, he seems to be pulling himself out of this tailspin and getting his life back together. Fuck.“ As a point of emphasis, Mr. Warbucks shot a nearby Filipino maid who had accidentally brushed against a bust of his direct ancestor, one John D. Rockefeller.

“I had my first job when I was 9 years old,” said Mr. Steele, “when I delivered newspapers to broke old ladies living in musty houses for a few dollars a week. I've done everything from courier to production assistant, barber, secretary, salesman, customer service agent, candy man, burial-banner carrier, transcriptionist, construction worker, fund-raiser, inventory-taker, janitor, and lumberjack; I've pretty much seen it all, and tried it all, and all I ever wanted all along was for someone of a caliber similar to Mr. Warbucks to openly acknowledge the fact that I am a productive and industrious individual who is worthy of love, life, and respect.”

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

“Spaghett, Shorty” in production

Abandoning all previous artistic endeavors and venturing forth on a more subdued and serious track, Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker of the 'Tim & Eric Show, Great Job' publicly announced the filming of a full-length film called 'Spaghett, Shorty.' Speaking last week to a group of reporters whom they had herded into the space between a couple of dumpsters behind their Hollywood production studios, the creative duo defended their stab at serious drama, saying, in unison, “This stab at serious drama is utterly defensible.”

Known more for producing material featuring pelvic-thrusting, tongue-waggling, eye-popping, awkwardly-snorting, fake-crying quasi-celebrities than for releasing products of any value to society, Messieurs Heidecker and Wareheim claim that the idea for 'Spaghett, Shorty' came to each man individually while washing off the crusty remains of simultaneous bouts of explosive diarrhea. “Yup,” said a source close to the pair. “I was near the toilets mopping up their wayward butt-juices, while, nearby, them two were in adjacent showers scraping at and cleaning their filthy dirt-holes. I heard them cry out in what could have been joy but what was more than likely recurrent diarrhea pangs, saying, in unison, 'Of course, old brother, of course we do Spaghett, Shorty!' I shall never understand how the artistic mind works.” The source then insisted on selling us a pound of bunt cake his mother had sent with him for his lunch-time dessert. (We relented; it was delicious.)

Set primarily in Miami during the mid-1980s, 'Spaghett, Shorty' tells the tale of one Thrankdon E. Kürzenschimmelreitersmann – or Shorty, for short – who falls in with a bad crowd after his parents are killed while ballooning in foul weather. Descending into utter madness and abandoning friends and family alike, Shorty eventually finds redemption, and love, in the arms of one Spaghett, a familiar character from the Tim & Eric Show, Great Job. According to insiders working on the film, it features not fart jokes or cameos by celebrities playing retarded people but serious topics such as man-rape, psychological self-indentureship, the vanishing rights of the flightless kiwi-bird, and a detailed history of the Nazi occupation of the Lower Western Friedrich's Islands, whence Shorty hails. “We wanted to serve up some serious fare to our swollen fan-base, which consists mostly of sex-deprived, canned-noodle-eating homebodies who can no longer stomach our usual light-hearted banter and family-oriented content,” said one of the two artists from under a stained and soggy bed-sheet that they had pulled from a dumpster and used to cover themselves. “'Shaghett, Shorty' is set to shatter all box-office records,” either Tim, or Eric, continued saying. “Those selfsame peeps who shelled out thirty million smackers to see our Billion Dollar Movie will lose their marble-sacks when they get a load of 'Spaghett, Shorty.' The final knife-fighting sequence alone cost big bucks to shoot, but, since it was directed by Ang Lee and choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, who both worked on Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, we expect our fans to get a really, really big kick out of it – huge, like, this big.” 'Spaghett, Shorty' will release to selected American markets before taking over the world.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on US elections

  The president of America is selected by individuals sent to the Electoral College by the individual states. Since the American people do not elect their own president, why do they care so much about which poor bozo gets the job?

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp