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Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Some Suggestions For Your Economic Stimulus Check

By Bob Wire, 4-29-08

You may have already received your big fat windfall from Uncle Sugar. If you’re one of the lucky ones who has at least two kids and a spouse, you might even have hit the jackpot limit of $1800. I love receiving money for nothing as much as the next deadbeat, but where is all this cabbage coming from? How is it that the federal government is handing out money and giving tax breaks to big business during a WAR, for crying out loud? Not only are they failing to ask their countrymen to make sacrifices for the war effort, they’re giving us billions of dollars they don’t have in some crack-brained attempt to juice up the economy they’ve run into the ground.

It’s like giving a hard-core alcoholic a bag of cocaine to keep his mind off his smack habit.

Let me tell you a little story: I was once like George Bush (Gasp! Baby fart!). That’s right—socially liberal, but fiscally a dumb ass. In the early days of my college career, the Shell Oil Company thought it would be a good idea to offer me a credit card. I didn’t even own a car, but the local Shell station sold Coors, Boone’s Farm and beef jerky. Giddyup, I said.

Within a year I found myself thousands of dollars in debt, but occasionally made some quick cash off my college buddies by using my card to fill up their cars, in return for some folding money. Every sales receipt I had to sign for beer was attributed to “six pack of do-it fluid ” or “one case of obnoxicant” or some such dodge. They eventually took away my card and wound up settling the account for a fraction of what I owed.

In 2005 Shell barely was able to earn 35 billion dollars in profits, so I hope they’ve learned a valuable lesson about extending credit to young men with morally casual attitudes, no sense of responsibility, and a preternatural thirst for beer.

Which brings us back to President George “I Still Have Checks Left So I Must Still Have Some Money” Bush. Now, as he digs a deeper and deeper crypt of debt for our children and their grandchildren to pay back with their game show winnings, we as a nation have let him get away with it. Our hard-won, Democrat-controlled Congress has been more disappointing than a brassiere on a cold day. Instead of showing some backbone and standing up to this schoolyard bully of an administration like we elected them to do, they collapsed like a hooker with TB, voting to continue to fund the immoral and devastating oil grab in Iraq, thus ensuring a national debt we’ll surely never overcome. I hope you’ve brushed up on your Middle Eastern dialects, because Saudi Arabia owns your ass. Thanks, Congress. Thanks a lot. Go sit on the Washington Monument.

But, when you come down to it, $1800 is $1800. So I’ve compiled a list of suggestions about how to stimulate our economy (and yourselves in the process).

1. Pay off your student loans.
Well, I guess you could do this, but it would be cheaper to just move, and let them spend another six years tracking you down. By then the entire economic system will have collapsed, and will have been recreated by a combination of Fox News, the United Arab Emirates, Hugo Chavez, and possibly Oprah Winfrey. Your student loans will have been sold to homeless bill collectors.

2. Invest it all in Apple Corp.
Hey, I’m telling you, when Steve Jobs announces next year’s ground-breaking Apple device, this stock is going through the ROOF! At this year’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Jobs was cagey: “I can’t tell you much about the next revolutionary machine from Apple, but it will make it possible for you see through walls.” Hmm. I’m thinking, windows? How ironic.

3. Buy a hand-held Taser.
Then move through the crowd at the Wilco concert, shocking people into realizing how overrated that band is.

4. Buy 4,186 postage stamps.
Then mail a small paper bag of poop to Dick Cheney every day for the rest of his life. You’ll probably have enough stamps left over to cover your Christmas card list for a few years.

5. Hire an airplane to pull a banner.
Have a sixty-foot long banner made up that says “Legalize Cockfighting.” Ride in the plane and have the pilot circle over Rock Creek Lodge during the Testicle Festival for two hours, then bail out using a parachute sewn entirely of discarded bull scrotums. I guarantee you’ll be the talk of the town.

6. Buy 2,022 tacos at Taco Bell.
But for god’s sake, please don’t use the drive-through.

7. At last, you can make a down payment on your first home.
Yeah. If you have a time machine. Because you’ll have to go back to 1972.

8. How about a round for the house at the Union Club during a Bob Wire show!
Let’s see: 71 pints of Mirror Pond Pale Ale, 14 bottles of Corona, 28 shots of Cuervo, 11 shots of Jaegermeister, one cup of coffee, three scotch & sodas, 19 Tanqueray & Tonics, and a Diet Pepsi. Okay, that covers the band. Who else needs a drink?

9. Buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV for your XBox.
It’s out today! Yay! Now I get to pretend I’m a badass thug and shoot people and steal their shit! Congratulations. Now take the rest of the money, some $1740, and see if you can go get yourself a life. Loser.

10. Buy every album B.B. King has every recorded.
You know what? You don’t have enough money. Better just stick with the box set.

11. Pick up an 8,000-foot long, ¾” drill bit.
Hopefully you can get one cheap at Ace Hardware. Make sure it’s American made. You’ll feel better about what you’re going to do next. Attach it to a good drill, and bore a hole clear through the earth, all the way to China. Then take what’s left of your Economic Stimulus money, roll it into a small tube, and shove it down the hole to China because no matter what you spend it on, chances are that’s where it was made and that’s where the money is going to end up.

[Bookmark it or don’t. I don’t give a shit.]

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By Bob Wire, 4-29-08 | comments (41) | email story | print story

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