Cock of the Perp Walk

 

H1N1: The Next Generation

The on-again, off-again H1N1 vaccination story here in Alberta reminds me an awful lot of this early Star Trek: The Next Generation episode: poorly timed, bad plot, broadly-drawn stereotypes, arrogant antagonist, gratuitous catfight, heated rhetoric...the only thing missing are the long lineups and immunized hockey players. It's easy to imagine Health Minister Ron Liepert barking "There will be NO VACCINE!"

Earl J. Woodshol

If I Had a Billion Dollars

While commuting the other day, Sylvia and I heard a news story about Alberta's latest lotto winners. As many people do, I started to think about what I'd do were I presented with a huge windfall.

For the record, I'm not a big fan of lotteries. While they're a useful source of government revenue, I think the false dreams and dashed hopes they propagate are pretty damaging in the long run - not to mention the countless stories of winning players whose lives are made worse by their "lucky" day! Far better to balance a reasonable, progressive tax burden with prudent government spending, rather than levying what amounts to another tax on the poor and desperate. Why should essential services like public health care and community infrastructure have to depend upon lotteries? Madness.

Anyway, the larger political issues don't prevent a little harmless fantasizing. Let's pretend that Sylvia and I find a two-ton meteorite made of pure platinum and that we're sufficiently wise enough to stake a legal claim and sell the wealth bits at a time to prevent a platinum glut. (All pretty crazy assumptions with about as much likelihood of success as...winning the lottery.)

So we wind up with a billion dollars. What would I do with my half?

Naturally I'd take care of the essentials first - some money for mom and dad and my brother, some generous donations to UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, and so on.

But on to the fun stuff. In all honesty, if I had more money than I knew what to do with and I gave millions to every charity on my list...I'd spend the rest of the cash being as eccentric as possible - but, I hope, in a fun and progressive way.

So. First order of business: Earl Acres, i.e., our new home. I'd have an architect build a haunting Gothic mansion, something out of Frankenstein. There would be a pipe organ in the main hallway, so that when guests arrive I would be ready, hunched over the keys, wearing a black cloak, playing that scary "DAH NA NA...DA NA NA NA NA NAAAAAAAAA..." music.

There would be a USS Enterprise bridge simulator room, built to scale, with all the stations intact and functional - well, functional in a simulator sense - this room would be used to play a custom-designed Star Trek combat/exploration game of epic scope. Naturally, this would double as a home theatre, with the stations folding out comfy home theatre seats, for those reluctant to sit for hours on those tiny retro chairs the crew had to endure.

Of course we'd need a staff to handle our estate and business affairs. I would hire each staff member based not only on their qualifications, but how well they fit Hollywood stereotypes for their roles. To wit, I would require:

One British butler, tall and gaunt and perpetually 60-ish, with a rapier deadpan wit.

One irritable French chef, a master of his art, but completely intolerant of his employers' lack of culinary refinement.

One beefy, handsome, macho, silent German chauffeur for Sylvia. He'd also be a crack bodyguard.

One gorgeous Brazilian housekeeper with an affinity for fishnets.

One inscrutable Japanese gardener, replete with Asian wisdom.

One officious, perpetually worried Canadian financial advisor, preferably balding with glasses.

One Indian secret agent woman, or at least an actress pretending to be an Indian secret agent, reporting all kinds of international intruigue and (fake) threats against Woods Foundation interests.

One African American martial arts instructor of the sweet sweetback badassss school.

One Ukrainian "mad"/absent-minded scientist - preferably a theoretical physicist. Must wear a lab coat constantly and play the Frankenstein role with glee.

I would pay all these folks extremely well, and provide them with state-of-the-art facilities for their daily routines. I think we could have a lot of fun running my little lunatic asylum, and in the process we might collectively make a point about cultural and sexual stereotypes. And perhaps make some scientific breakthroughs!

I wonder what Sylvia would do with her $500 million?

SYLVIA NEEDS EGGS

Eggs for You Happy Smile Time Super Sasquatch Variety Show!

Sylvia Boucher stars in "Eggs for You Happy Smile Time Super Sasquatch Variety Show!"

She receives eggs with many smiles! Helper man delivers with speed, steam rises! Eggs boiled to perfection! Smashed open and served on a hot toast spread into the form of a waffle! Cut slice the toast, mash fork handsomely!

Argh! Channel

I despise the reality TV phenomenon, and yet I keep thinking of new ways to exploit it. In a dark, dystopian future, I envision an entire channel dedicated to those incredibly painful accidents that often figure into reality shows: it's called Argh!, and here are a few potential shows:

Canada’s Most Chilling Bandsaw Accidents
Amateur woodworkers compete to create ashtrays, candlesticks, and other useless geegaws - all without a single minute of safety training, or for that matter, equipment. Of course, private clinics are close by for fast (if expensive) treatment.

Nude Paintball Championships
Post-secondary students desperate for cash for tuition and books have a chance to win it all - if they agree to compete, nude, in a no-holds-barred paintball championship played in an abandoned cement quarry.

Dart Fight
Drunken fools fight with darts for free pitchers of beer.

Hammer Fight
Convicted felons fight with hammers for the chance to win early parole.

America’s Funniest Falling-Down-the-Stairs Videos
The title says it all. There's more of this sort of footage than you may think.

Xtreme Bottle to the Teeth Trials
Xtreme Teens prove their street cred and win Xtreme prizes by allowing their friends to assault them with glass bottles - bottles full of the hottest new energy drinks and sodas.

Sledgehammer Soccer
All the excitement of soccer, all the mayhem of sledgehammers.

Marquis de Sade of Queensbury Rules Boxing
No gloves? No mouth protector? No problem! Slip into your gonch, wrap your fist around a roll of quarters, and step into the ring to fight other desperate souls for a shot at winning a month's ration of Victory Gin.

World’s Dumbest Rednecks
Bread and Circuses in the sticks! Keep the population ignorant enough, and they'll do anything...from voting for reactionary candidates in spite of their own best interests to blowing up old refrigerators with found munitions, the World's Dumbest Rednecks will provide ample distraction from the issues of the day.

Celebrity Coconut Fight
The people love their celebrities almost as much as they hate them, and now they can punish their most despised has-beens by nominating them for Celebrity Coconut Fight! Washed-up celebs (in particular, those pinko liberals) are rounded up and tossed into Coconut Plaza, where they'll fight their fellow stars by hurling hard, milk-filled coconuts at each other! They're not just fighting for chimp change - they're fighting for their lives!

Let's Make a Bloody Mess
Monty Hall's clone hosts this exciting new game show, in which members of the studio audience act as inconspicuously as possible, hoping to avoid Hall's evil eye. Losing contestants are marched onstage and forced to pick door one, door two, or door three. One door hides a glamorous prize; another, a man-eating tiger; a third, a claymore antipersonnel mine. Everyone's a winner on Let's Make a Bloody Mess! Well, not really.

Cooking with Dynamite
Subversive chefs are rounded up to prepare tasty meals for the ruling class. If the meals fail to please, the cook must try again - but this time, the meal is prepared with an extra ingredient: sweaty dynamite. One false move, and the cook's goose - along with all other ingredients - is cooked!

Guns and Butter
Starving proles have a chance to earn groceries for the week - but only if they're willing to turn the aisles into a shooting gallery. Armed with a shopping cart and a six-shooter, each desperate shopper must survive flying bullets while racing the clock to fill their carts with as much desperately-needed food as possible. Cleanup in aisle 4!

Playground Pandemonium
Children know all about social Darwinism, and now they can experience it in all its brutal glory. It's bullies versus geeks and outcasts in the ultimate showdown: brains against brawn, with no holds barred, and no teachers allowed! (Except to watch in horror.)

Celebrity Coconut Fight

I've been trying to come up with some reality show concepts that might actually be entertaining. A while back, I came up with "Blast Zone," which I described to Sylvia, who then demanded that I never speak of it again, so I'll refrain from doing so here.

Last week, however, I invented "Celebrity Rock Fight," which would of course involve today's hottest celebrities clobbering each other with rocks. But then I amended that to "Celebrity Coconut Fight," for that extra frisson of surreality.

In each episode, each celebrity gets a pile of coconuts, and they battle on a themed soundstage - say, if it's two politicians, they fight in a House of Commons set, if it's a pair of boxers they fight in a boxing ring, etc. First celebrity to lose consciousness loses the coconut fight. Winner gets to advance to the next round of coconut combat.

The neat thing about this show is that the television audience gets to vote on which celebrities they want to appear on the show, and it's a binding referendum. Oh sure, the celebrities can moan about civil rights and whatnot, but in my world of tomorrow, the public's thirst for spectacle must be slaked, no matter the cost!

Who would YOU vote for? I'm thinking Carrot Top vs. Britney Spears in the first round.