Stoogepie Bank: Open for Business

When I was just a wee stoogepie, my daddy used to say, “Son, every great crisis presents a great opportunity.” Then he would create a crisis of some kind.

So, I have given a lot of thought to this whole global financial crisis. Where is the great opportunity?

Yeah, the financial crisis gave the nation as a whole the balls to elect a black president, and that’s something to be proud of. And it may yet give the nation the hair on those balls to institute a truly massive national stimulus that, while it would be nearly impossible to beat Roosevelt’s New Deal, could come close. Trillions of dollars may go toward making this nation’s middle class prosper and once again control America’s vast wealth. We’ll have to wait and see on that one. The stimulus package already approved by Congress is only a drop in the bucket, though. It doesn’t even yet include a bailout of banks.

All this is fine. But meanwhile, I have been asking myself, how can I, stoogepie, make billions off of this world economic crisis?

American Express provided the answer. See, in November, American Express, which is a credit card company and not a bank, decided that it would declare itself a bank. It did. Then it applied for and received $3.39 billion in bailout money. The CIT Group, a commercial lender that offers no traditional bank services and no consumer services, did the same thing. It declared itself a bank and then got $2.33 billion in bailout money. Both companies became banks just to take advantage of the bailout.

And so it occurred to me, why not open a bank? I mean, the final bill for bailing out America’s banks is very likely to be a couple of trillion bucks. I want some of that. Don’t you want some of that?

So, welcome to stoogepie Bank. You can view the mockup of the full stoogepie Bank website here. None of it works yet and, hopefully, the bank will be belly up before I ever finish designing the website.

Here is how it works: you send stoogepie Bank your money and I lose it all making incredibly bad investments, just like a real financial mogul. I will even make shoddy investments such as lending your money back to you so that you can buy houses and fancy shoes. Need a student loan or a credit card? Well, stoogepie Bank will give you both. And, instead of asking you to pay back your loans with money, stoogepie Bank will accept sex. Until the bailout money comes. Then we’ll all head to our own luxury retreat.

See, it’s incredibly easy to start a bank. Here in New York, for instance, all you need is $7-10 million in start-up capital. Then you pay a $12,500 fee and you have a bank. Okay, you also need to fill out a 54-page application, but most of that application is composed of instructions, like a for-dummies guide to opening a bank. In California, it’s more complicated to figure out the fees because you have to pay an assessment of your bank’s total assets and, to start a bank, you must have a minimum of $6-10 million in start-up capital. With $10 million, your fee for starting a bank would be $14,417 this year. You pay that and fill out a one-page form, and you’ve got yourself a bank! All of a sudden, you are eligible for bailout money!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I want some bailout money. See, I’m all for helping out people in need, but I kind of have a problem with helping out people who are just stoopid or dishonest. Like the bankers who lost all that money and then got massive bonuses with the bailout money. Or the many people who lied on mortgage applications they knew they could never afford. Let’s face it: not only the lenders and appraisers and mortgage brokers were dishonest. Borrowers frequently lied on their applications, too. In fact, according to one survey, as many as 70% of the people defaulting on their mortgages lied on their mortgage applications, many lying about their income by multiplying it by as much five and others forging documents using their computers.

But more and more, I wonder whether I am just the fool. Were all those cheats the smart ones? While I was busy just going to work every day and putting off buying a brand new stoogepen until the market softened, they were getting cheap loans and big bonuses and riding the wave of plenty. And, now, when the bailout comes, I wind up with fucking diddly. They all get bailed out, and I get passed by.

Well, no fucking way! Give me my fucking share of the bailout money. They are giving away trillions! Trillions!

And, since I know that people who read my blog are uncommonly responsible and honest, none of you are probably getting shit out of this bailout, either. So, put all your money in stoogepie Bank! Get StoogeBling® and borrow your money and more back! Then, when I get a fat check from the bailout, I’ll send you your share.

I did my taxes recently. They are not finished yet but I owe a bundle of money again, in part because 2008 was not all that bad a year for me in spite of all the doom and gloom. But some of my tax money is going to wind up in irresponsible people’s pockets. Oh, sure, some of it will go to people who lost their jobs for no reason at all and some will go to people who are losing their homes although they did everything responsible and sensibly. A lot of it is going to the good, honest, hardworking people of this country I admire so much because I am nothing like them and wonder sometimes whether they even exist.

But none of my tax money is coming back to me.

Well, that’s fucking bullshit.

So, please, send me your money. I promise that I can be wildly irresponsible and I will lose much, much more money than you send me. And then, when I get my $25 billion like Wells Fargo got, we can all split it. Well, maybe like Wells Fargo, I will buy up another bank with about half of that money to get myself a tax break.

We’ll split what’s left over after I buy a bank. Don’t get fucking greedy.

Of course, I will have to be compensated as president of the bank. Unfortunately, thanks to Obama, I won’t be able to get the kind of pay that Goldman Sachs executives got with their bailout money. Before Obama took office, as part of the Bush bailout, the top five executives at Goldman Sachs were paid $242 million altogether for their fine work bankrupting the company so it needed to be bailed out. Now, under Obama, I will only be able to get up to $500,000 per year plus stock options that can only be used after the bailout money is paid back. Since I never intend to pay my bailout money back, that means I can only make half a mil. That’s practically fucking charity, people, because I will lose money better and faster than any of those fucktards at Goldman Sachs or Citicorp or AIG or Capital One did.

There is the small chance that the US will nationalize all the banks, and that would completely destroy my plan to get bailout money. But Obama has tried to dispel those nationalization rumors—without actually ruling that option entirely out—by citing his administration’s preference for a sound privately owned banking system. Yeah, I want that, too. As long as I get some fucking bailout money. Now, give me my fucking money.

Anyways, all I’m saying is, send stoogepie Bank all your money. I will invest it unwisely and lose it all. I promise! I will lend it back to you to buy whatever the fuck you want with nothing but your lies and promises as collateral. And you can pay your loans back with blowjobs and rimjobs until the bailout money comes. And then you’ll get your share.

So, anyway, aside from my announcement of stoogepie Bank, I do need to tell you all that there have been not one but two deaths in the stoogepie family in the past week, including my grandma. So, that pretty much leaves just me and mum still alive in the United States. When people die, they leave a lot of baggage behind that has to be taken care of, including funeral arrangements and will readings and unpaid taxes and such that I now have the pleasure of keeping on top of, so I may appear even more out of touch than usual for the next week or so. But I’m fine, as usual.

So that I could deliver the sermons, stoogepie became an ordained minister at the Universal Life Church Monastery, which claims to have ordained over twenty million people since 1959. You can become an ordained minister online, too! It takes ten minutes! Then you can order your Ministry-in-a-Box like I did so you, too, can buy your friends and family members a ticket to Marble City in your own personal style.

For the low additional price of $29.99, you can also receive the honorary degree Doctor of Divinity or Doctor of Metaphysics. And for only $11.99 per title, you can be proclaimed a saint or even be proclaimed the pope. I paid for a lot of these, so please call me Dr. Saint Stoogepie from now on. I don’t want to be pope. I don’t do headgear.

That’s all I have to say about that. But don’t forget to send me all your money.

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Happy Biochemical Reaction Day

So, it’s Valentine’s Day as I write this. Or, more precisely, Saint Valentine’s Day.

Yeah, that’s right. This is a religious holiday.

Yep, this is a religious holiday, even though nobody knows who the fuck Saint Valentine was. In fact, there were numerous saints named “Valentine” and we don’t know shit about any of them. In 496 AD, when Pope Gelasius I first established the feast of Saint Valentine, he said that nobody knew one fucking thing about the dude. If the fucking pope didn’t know shit about a saint 1,500 years ago, you can be pretty sure that we are not in better shape today. Usually, all we know about saints are the lies told a couple of hundred years or so after they died.

I know that a lot of you say, “Whatev. Valentine’s Day ain’t no fucking religious holiday. It is all about just telling someone you love that you love them. What’s wrong with that?”

There’s nothing wrong with that. And all that Valentine’s Day stands for supports that very sentiment. Valentine’s Day may, for that very reason, be the most perfect holiday ever.

See, on President’s Day we get a fucking day off and we don’t do shit. What has being on vacation got to do with any president except George W. Bush? And on Christmas we exchange gifts and decorate trees that we chop down so that they can die in our living rooms. What has that got to do with Jesus or even with zombies in general? And on Thanksgiving we eat like disgusting fucking pigs and then nap and watch football all day. What has that got to do with being American? Okay, never mind that last one.

But on Valentine’s Day, we do lots of things that symbolize modern love. We exchange cards, which are mass-produced emotions we are supposed to feel. We go out to expensive restaurants that we can’t actually afford to eat at everyday, to get food and service we wish our spouses would provide for us. We exchange huge candy assortments knowing that we will only like maybe three or four of the fifty candy pieces, but we will suffer and eat the other 47 nasty candies because, well, they’re there. We give flowers that we will watch wither and die as they struggle to live and reproduce before death takes them and they are forgotten forever. What could better symbolize modern love and marriage than these things, and paying twice as much for them as at any other time of the year?

The things we do on Valentine’s Day are perfectly symbolic. Valentine’s Day is the most symbolically honest holiday ever!

I know that, in a country in which, by all accounts, the divorce rate for all marriages is close to fifty percent, it may be hard to get behind this whole Valentine’s Day thing. Maybe you even have a hard time getting your head wrapped around the whole idea of love.

But don’t let divorce rates hinder your appreciation of love. Divorce is complicated and really shouldn’t be used as a gauge. For instance, divorce is higher among conservative and born-again Christians than among any other group, including atheists and agnostics. And divorce is highest in Bible Belt states, with Florida number one in the nation followed closely by Texas. God is love? I don’t think so.

But here is the thing. You can excuse the bible thumpers for not knowing what love is. After all, Adam and Eve never fell in love. They just got stuck with one another. Maybe they spent their days fucking when God was not walking around the Garden of Eden naked talking to himself, but love is never mentioned in Genesis.

So the Christians have an excuse. You atheists, who are not stoopid, believe in evolution. You believe that humans, like other animals, have evolved with an optimal strategy for reproduction. Love has nothing to do with it and, in fact, to the extent love exists at all, it is biochemical.

Human behavior dictates that monogamy is social and not genetic. After all, the divorce rates aside, 50-60% of men and 45-55% of women have extramarital affairs. But, to the extent that we feel an attraction to another person, those of you who believe in evolution know this must be a biochemical response to an evolutionary need to reproduce. The same way you feel hunger and cravings rather than actually feeling the emptiness of your stomach or the need for particular nutrients, you feel love because you need to bust a nut. The same way you feel fear rather than actually hearing your blood pumping more quickly through your veins or adrenaline thrusting itself into your bloodstream, you feel love when you want to fuck. In fact, love feels a lot like hunger and fear.

And, of course, we know from history that humans were not monogamous. At the very least, they were polygynous, with one man having as many wives as he could afford. I’m sure those dudes loved each and every one of them, too.

That’s why women are so into wealthy men. Oh, I know you hate when people say shit like that. Well, I didn’t put Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire on TV. Also, when was the last time you dated a homeless dude? What, you’ve never dated a homeless dude? Isn’t that interesting? If love was truly blind, every now and then a woman would fall for someone entirely beneath them in social status. But that’s a real rarity, as it turns out.

Study after study confirms a few things. First, women look for signs of wealth in men as a first determinant of attractiveness. Men look for physical beauty first and, as a result, prefer younger women. Women are not so picky when it comes to age: status is key to them.

That’s what love is all about.

So, to all you lovers out there, happy biochemical reaction to environmental stimuli that maximizes your chances for reproduction and optimizes species survivability and adaptability! Or, put another way, Happy Saint Valentine’s Day!

Actually, I’m posting this so late that it won’t be Saint Valentine’s Day anymore by the time you read this.

But Valentine’s Day also happens to be stoogepie’s birthday. So happy fucking birthday to me.

That’s all I have to say about that.

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Great Stories of the Bible 1

The Sweepstakes Winner.

So, Soapbox, who won the Nude MILF Sweepstakes, never claimed her or his prize.  On the one hand, I kind of had a feeling this might happen.  On the other hand, I expected to find an email in my inbox right after the deadline because that’s how shit happens.

So, as I said in my last boring entry, now I will choose a second chance winner from the people who have voted for Crissy for Hottest Mommy Blogger for 2009.  I will choose that winner Tuesday afternoon.  So, this is your last fucking chance.  You must send me your username before the drawing because I have no intention of keeping this camera for another week.  If I don’t know who you are, I will choose another winner.  Period.  After I randomly draw the second-chance winner, I will randomly draw the winner of the camcorder from among the blogs that pimped the contest, so if your blog did not appear among the list in my last boring entry, let me know.  Note that the second-chance winner and the pimping winner have no relation to one another.  That is all.  You have until noon tomorrow to vote.  Do it now and send me your username.  Note that I do not need your password.

Great Stories of the Bible.

I am a big fan of the bible.

Those of you who have been following for a while may be as stoogepious at this point as I am.  If not, I want converts.

So, I have decided that, in order to bring you into the fold, I will illustrate an important bible story every now and then, complete with an explanation of the lessons it teaches us.  Today’s story is the entire 19th chapter of Judges.  It is a great story and teaches us some very valuable lessons.  I have been faithful to the original story.  The only change I have made is to get rid of the extras — a servant boy and two donkeys — but the rest of the story is in there without censorship or embellishment.

Enjoy.

That’s all I have to say about the bible for right now, but stay tuned for more Great Stories of the Bible in the future.

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Stoogepiety: In The Beginning

There is a Christian in Texas who says that doomsday begins tomorrow, on June 12th.  Set your clocks.  (Just in case that link goes dead due to armageddon, check out this link.)

This got me thinking.  Suppose this dude is right and the beginning of the end is tomorrow?  Would all of you Christians who scoffed at this dude and ignored him and ridiculed him join me poolside in hell?

My bigger question is: why are you Christians so confident that faith leads to anything other than rich televangelists and an ever-growing list of Christian evangelical scandals?

Hey, Jesus was a Jew, right?  And all the most devout Jews around him did not believe he was the messiah.  And don’t tell me that they were doing something wrong.  Jane and Joe Israelite were doing their best, following what we now call the Old Testament, and — just like you — listening to the spiritual guidance of someone who said he had all the answers but who was also always worried about some Expensive Religious Emergency that needed to be paid for before next week’s episode.

And, fuck, even Jesus’s own brothers and sisters did not believe him!  I mean, the three stooges wise men had recognized him on sight, but thirty long goddamn years later after living with Him and who knows how many fucking miracles and mom and dad talking about the virgin birth and King Herod and frankincense and myrrh, his own fucking brothers and sisters were unconvinced!  That had to hurt.

So what makes Christians today think that they will recognize the new messiah when he or she strolls along the next time?  The most devout Jews didn’t recognize him the first time.  Only a handful of people paid any attention at all.  And, I mean, this is a dude who created an army of zombies and was a zombie himself!

Let me change gears here for a moment because I am going somewhere with this.  Like I said, this prophesy about the world ending tomorrow got me thinking, so I decided I would pick up my bible and look it over again.

Anyway, I was reading my bible while waiting for the train today on my way to work when this woman — not a hot woman — who was sitting next to me on the subway platform wants to talk about the bible.

I’m paraphrasing, but that really is pretty much how the conversation went.

All that I’m saying is this: I know that all you supposedly righteous Christians will scoff when my Stoogepiety™ ministry starts up.  But you had better watch out.  Just like happened 2,000 years ago, you just might not recognize Christianity 2.0 or Judaism 3.0 or whatever you want to call it, even as it is damning you to an infernal eternity in the Lake of Boredom.  And you will probably just kill me.  And the difference is that when I come back as a zombie with my army of zombies, we will eat your fucking brains and draw goddamn comics about it.

The time draws nigh.  Yes, nigh.

Anyway, here is a preview of the kind of dogma you can expect from Stoogepiety™: Forget all that other bullshit.  You are meat.  Get used to it.  Thanks for playing.

And here is my very first prophesy: the world will not end tomorrow. 

Stay tuned for miracles.

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Alabama Needs Dildos

I have discussed the ban on the sale of sex toys in Alabama before.  I want Alabama to repeal this law.  In September of 2007, a bill that would have repealed the ban on sex toys was killed in Alabama’s House of Representatives.  The good news is that, at the same session, the Alabama House of Representatives also killed a bill, called the Alabama Academic Freedom Act, that would have made it okay for teachers in Alabama schools to teach children that Jesus served dinosaur steaks at the last supper.

In fairness, I should mention that, until very recently, Texas and Mississippi had also banned sales of sex toys.  In February of this year, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Texas law.  Since Mississippi is also in the 5th Circuit, that decision renders the ban in Mississippi essentially unenforceable (though it is still on the books).

That leaves Alabama.  Alabama, in the 11th Federal Circuit, is unaffected by decisions in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Alabama is, of course, otherwise a thoroughly modern state.  It even repealed its law against interracial marriages in 2000.  At the dawn of the twenty-first century, only 42% of Alabama citizens voted against allowing white people to marry black people.  How fucking progressive.

A little more than a year ago, the 11th Circuit, Alabama’s Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, found that a ban against sex toys was perfectly fine as far as the United States Constitution is concerned because “there was no ... right to sexual privacy” and “concerns over public morality” are a legitimate basis for any law.  In the spirit of romance, they filed this opinion on Valentine’s Day, 2007.

Also about a year ago, the same 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found that mental retardation is not a disability.  They wrote, “It is unclear whether thinking, communicating and social interaction are ‘major life activities….’”  This explains a lot.

Anyway, I am not here to rag on Alabama.  I want to celebrate Alabama.  For your benefit, Alabama, I am here to show you that, with your silly ban on sex toys, you are missing out.  There are sex toys out there that would especially appeal to the people of your fine state.  This is really just a random sample of a few of my favorites, but it will convince you to repeal your ban on sex toys.

You have seen blow-up dolls, Alabama.  You obviously don’t really think blow-up dolls are all that special or you would be screaming about this whole sex-toy ban.  I can’t imagine why you don’t find blow-up dolls as attractive as the rest of the country.

But Alabama is also the third fattest state in the nation, narrowly (or not so narrowly) behind Mississippi’s and West Virginia’s fat asses.  So, Alabama, have you seen this?

Come on.  You know you want one.

Also, Alabama has the second highest rate of uninsured motorists in the nation.  A whopping twenty-five percent — yes, 25% — of drivers on the road in Alabama are uninsured.  (Again, Alabama was beat narrowly only by Mississippi.)  And most of those uninsured motorists are fat.

Uninsured motorists are responsible for a disproportionate number of accidents that result in serious, life-changing injury.  As a result, there are probably more than a few people in Alabama (and Mississippi) who look like this sex toy.

Sexy, huh?  It’s like it was made with your state in mind.

Finally, as the 11th Circuit stated, Alabama passed this silly sex-toy ban because it is concerned with public morality.  I suggest that, if that is truly Alabama’s concern, it could pass a law instead that says people shouldn’t play with their sex toys in public.

I suspect that there is also a religious motivation.  Alabama is squarely in the bible belt with the bible belt’s higher-than-the-national-average rates of divorce, crime, alcoholism, and domestic violence.  In addition, Alabama is the home of ex-Judge Roy Moore.  Roy Moore was the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who refused to remove the ten commandments from the state courthouse in 2003.  As a result, he had to be forcibly removed from his post as Chief Justice: he was violating the law by ignoring federal courts.  While Alabama is concerned with public morality when it comes to sex toys, it stands steadfastly behind a Chief Justice of its Supreme Court who publicly defies the law.

Sex toys can offer Alabama the best of both worlds without any hypocrisy.  Alabama can enjoy sex toys and religion in private.  And sex toys can enhance the religious experience.

First, we have Baby Jesus buttplugs, which I have discussed in the past.  The same company that makes the Baby Jesus buttplugs, Divine Interventions, also makes Moses dildos.  If you buy both you can use them in the privacy of your own home or even under the cloak of your judicial robes, enjoying the old and the new testaments in ways you never before dreamed.  You can bring Moses with you to the courthouse every day parting your sphincter just as he parted the Red Sea.  How is that for sticking it to the Constitution and its Separation of Church and State?

So, come on Alabama.  Get with the program.  Sex toys are okay and you know it.  Stop giving people reasons to write blogs about you.

You know, re-reading this entry, I think maybe I should write something about Mississippi some time.

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