At Least the Teddy Bear is Restrained

Ahhh....crazy people.

Whether you're dating them or giving them directions to the bus station, they're just not the same as they used to be. They used to be in mental hospitals surrounded by other crazy people and psychiatrists...but now they're being interviewed for that opening at your cell phone company's customer service group or your local police department.

Since 1960 more than 90% of "state psychiatric beds have been eliminated" and in the 1990's alone 44 state mental hospitals were closed down. There must have been some revolutionary crazy cure that I missed while I was wasting my time watching the Electric Company and eating cereal. In fact this cure seems to be so revolutionary that the only people who noticed it were people who invested in pharmaceutical company's and of course the pharmaceutical companies themselves.

Even though this year was a bit of a down year due to a bunch of crap being spewed by a bunch of stupid liberals who hate progress and democracy, the bottom line is people love drugs and hate hospitals.

So the next time a homeless guy leaning against the wall outside the coffee shop asks you for a couple of bucks, give it to him. He just wants to by some kind of drug.

If he had a hospital to go to you'd be paying for it anyway.

Bartender...Make That A Rebel

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Very little in this post is work friendly. Even though I risk offending and disturbing many of you,... it's ok. I'm a police officer.

In case you don't spend a lot of time in bars "undercover" like myself, you may not have seen the this "beer ad" from the Czech company Rebel Beer.

It's classy. With a capital K.

And even though you may not have seen this ad yet, I guarantee that your 13 year old son, who's been locked in the bathroom with the water running since last tuesday has.

Four Hundred Twenty Seven Thousand Million Reasons to Spend More Money

According to the White House , $427 Billion is the projected budget deficit for 2005.

Some of the other officers an I were discussing this information and decided it might be helpful to look at this number as something slightly more understandable to those of us without billions of dollars at our disposal.

$427 Billion is $427,000,000,000. Or - (now make sure you say this aloud) - Four Hundred Twenty Seven Thousand Million. A Million Dollars is a lot of money to most people who aren't employed by the government. And so is Four Hundred and Twenty Seven dollars for most of the people that live in one of those countries where you can sponsor kids for less than a cup of coffee per day.

Well, maybe a cup of coffee from dunkin donuts or the Speedway, not the half decaf sugar free vanilla fair trade wet cappuccino that you bought today while looking at strange perspective photographs of a life size stone oxen selling for $427. Without the frame.

Of course there is someone who figured out the math of stacking thousand dollar bills...and this would be helpful in illustrating the amazing size of the deficit, except that there are no thousand dollar bills. There are only hundreds. And if you stack one hundred dollar bills in the amount of the projected deficit, on very level and non-windy ground it will go about 337 miles up or well into the thermosphere - whatever that is. Also if we were to pay a million dollars a minute as a nation to get this deficit in line, we would be paying for 11 months. And be really pissed.

And of course the $427 Billion is only this years projected deficit. The total balance of the National Debt is over $7.6 Trillion. Or $7.6 Million Millions. Which is really a lot more money than the a lot of money we already illustrated above...I think that stack would go to very near the Romulan Neutral Zone.

Either way that's one big credit card statement. And I'm not sure what the minimum payment on a $7.6 trillion credit card bill would be...but I'm pretty sure we can negotiate with the creditors somehow.