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Posts Tagged ‘Congress’

Janet’s Civics Test

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

It has come to my attention that America is falling into a pit of stupidity and ignorance. To that end, I have developed the following test. Remember, this is only a test. Don’t feel badly if you fail miserably. I had to use Google to search for most of the answers.

1. Barack Obama is ______.

a)     The Anti-Christ.

b)    A Muslim.

c)     The president of the United States.

d)    The refrain from a popular song from the ’50s.

e)     A man born in a foreign country and snuck into the U.S. by al-Qaida.

2. Bank of America is ______.

a)     A bank.

b)    A criminal organization.

c)     A black hole where poor people’s money disappears.

d)    A place that charges you money for keeping your money.

e)     All of the above.

3. The Tea Party is ________.

a)     A group of people with many complaints, but no solutions.

b)    A performance by a male dancer in a gay bar.

c)     A group of white people who fear … uh, everything.

d)    A festive event involving cake and crumpets.

e)     All of the above.

4. Which of the following is (are) not in the Bill of Rights?

a)     Freedom of speech, religion and the press, and the right to assemble.

b)    Right to be protected from people who think differently than you.

c)     Right to have no single entity controlling a state’s water supply.

d)    Right to be protected from having to house soldiers of war.

e)     Right to wear white after Labor Day.

5. Which of the following people have not been president of the United States?

a)     Zachary Taylor.

b)    Chester Arthur.

c)     Archibald Leach.

d)    William Powell.

e)     Andrew Johnson.

6. Which of the following wars have been fought over oil?

a)     Operation Prime Chance.

b)    Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya.

c)     The Iraq War.

d)    The Persian Gulf War.

e)     All of the above.

7. Which of the following statements are false?

a)     There is a toxic zone the size of Switzerland in Russia that surrounds the Chernobyl Nuclear Facility where no humans are allowed for the next 275 years.

b)    Newt Gingrich has his skin and hair artificially whitened with bleach.

c)     In 2007, Corporate CEOs earned 344 times the pay of the average worker. In 1961, CEOs earned 42 times the pay of the average worker.

d)    Sarah Palin was born in Canada.

e)     Rush Limbaugh is the stage name of William Cockburn. Born to a family of circus performers, Cockburn’s first stage appearance was in 1962. He rode on the trunk of an elephant during the opening act of the show.

8. Which of the following statements are true?

a)     Kazakhstan has a higher literacy rate than the United States.

b)    Most U.S. citizens have never heard of Kazakhstan.

c)     The U.S. has the highest crime rate of all the developed nations.

d)    The U.S. has the highest percentage of gun ownership in the world.

e)     The U.S. has the highest obesity rate in the world.

9. Which of the following is not a power of Congress?

a)     Promoting science and the arts by ensuring fair copyright laws.

b)    Promoting the agendas of large multi-national corporations.

c)     Ensuring that roads are built and maintained for the postal system.

d)    Declaring war on poor people.

e)     Outlawing the usage of biodegradable forks in the congressional cafeteria.

10. What’s the average net worth of a U.S. senator?

a)     3 million dollars.

b)    5 million dollars.

c)     10 million dollars.

d)    14 million dollars.

e)     20 million dollars.

11) What’s the net worth of the wealthiest U.S. senator?

a)     50 million dollars.

b)    75 million dollars.

c)     132 million dollars.

d)    175 million dollars.

e)     265 million dollars.

ANSWERS:

1)    Are you out of your freakin’ mind? C is the answer. He’s the president, you dopes. He was born in AMERICA. He’s an AMERICAN. And he’s CHRISTIAN. Sheesh.

2)    e. All of the above. Bank of America is a scourge and screwed my family out of 75 grand. And yes, I have proof. But not enough money to fight them.

3)    e. All of the above. Except the act the dancer performs is called “tea-bagging.”

4)    b, c, and e. But I really wish “c” were part of them. Multi-national corporations are buying up water rights everywhere. Beware!

5)    c and d. Archibald Leach was actor Cary Grant’s real name. William Powell starred in the Thin Man movies of the 1940s.

6)    e. All of the above. Actually most wars have been to “protect American interests abroad.” Amazing how “our” oil got underneath “their” sand.

7)    b, d and e. I wish “a” were false. I wonder how many Switzerland-sized pieces of land we’ll turn into dead zones here in America before we wake up and realize that nuclear energy is the most dangerous and stupid way we’ve developed to boil water. Hint: Don’t buy land in San Luis Obispo or San Diego.

8)    All are true. At least we can read the print on our boxes of Twinkies and ammo.

9)    All are powers of Congress. Well, maybe not technically, but these are still true, even though the fork issue is still being debated.

10) d. 14 bloody million freakin’ dollars. When the average net worth of an American citizen is $86,000. Yeah, these guys sure can relate to the rest of us.

11)  e. $265,629,996. Herb Kohl, a Democrat from Wisconsin, earned this in 2008. How’d he make all that money in freakin’ Wisconsin? And shouldn’t he be a Republican?

How did you do? Do you feel smart now? Stupid? Enlightened? Or overloaded?

I feel e) All of the above.

© 2011 Janet Periat

Laws I’d Like To See

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Many laws are stupid and serve little purpose other than to further a politician’s career or pad the pockets of Wall Street. So I’ve decided to write my own stupid laws.

Law No. 1: Identity thieves must assume all the responsibilities of their victims’ lives for a period of one year. Examples: mortgage payments, jury duty, high school reunions, cleaning their houses and cars, and visits to Grandma Cranky Pants to hear all about her latest colonoscopy (complete with viewing pictures of Grandma’s colon). Identity thieves also must attend all holiday gatherings and will be forced to eat all the fruitcake at Christmas. And don’t forget to clean the cat box.

Law No. 2: All landlords and investors who purchase new buildings must occupy them for a period of one year before renting them out. In recent years, across the nation, judges have ordered slumlords to occupy their rentals as punishment for refusing to maintain the buildings. If this were made into a legal requirement, landfills would be brimming with orange and green shag carpeting, harvest gold kitchen appliances and brown linoleum.

Law No. 3: People who purchase loud cars and motorcycles must endure five nights of listening to the vehicle start and the engine rev right outside their bedroom windows before they are allowed to use them. “Loud Pipes Save Lives” will become “Quiet Pipes Save Lives” because if you rev that sucker at 6 a.m. just one more time, your neighbors will kill you.

Law No. 4: Make it a felony to break campaign promises. That oughta shorten those stupid campaign ads.

Law No. 5: All celebrities with product lines must prove they used the product for a period of one year before they are allowed to advertise and sell it. Products must be used in public. Which means Martha Stewart must defile her backyard with her tacky outdoor furniture from Kmart and Jaclyn Smith must humiliate herself in those ugly polyester old-lady clothes.

Law No. 6: All congressmen and senators must wear patches that signify what corporations they represent. Like race car drivers. Or they should be forced to wear tight, risqué outfits and strut around the Senate floor saying things like, “Sugar wants some sugar.” Or “Me so loyal. Me love you long time.”

Law No. 7: All instruction manuals for new electronics must be vetted by a panel of 80-year-olds. The panel must be able to use the product within a reasonable amount of time, not to exceed 30 minutes.

Law No. 8: Only 6-year-olds are allowed to vote in the primaries. Which would make politicians’ lies much clearer in their campaign ads. “Kids, I will outlaw school and make every day a holiday. I will make Santa my vice president. I’ll give you lots of candy if you let me be president. Toys for everyone!”

Law No. 9: All household electronics must be tested by monkeys for ease of use. Instead of being designed by monkeys. I still can’t work my microwave without staring at the control pad for a good few seconds to figure it out. Non-intuitive controls dominate my household technology. The PLAY button on the 67-button remote for my DVD player is the size of a BB. Try finding that in the dark when you only have one finger that isn’t covered in Cheetos cheese powder.

Law No. 10: All skinny supermodels’ photos must be accompanied by a disclosure of their actual diets. One carrot, six diet Red Bulls and two grams of cocaine.

Law No. 11: All fast-food ads must feature people who actually consume the products. Like Two-Ton Tilly and Wide-Ride Clyde spilling out of their seats while chowing down on Quadruple-Bypass Burgers, Mega Chili-Cheese Fries and two-gallon Super Soda Bloaters.

Law No. 12: Airline executives are only allowed to fly coach. Let them eat their knees, get blood clots in their legs and be charged to use the lavatory. Bet we’d get the peanuts back and more blankets.

Law No. 13: Actors in television programs must accurately reflect the nation’s populous. Which means one-third of all actors in TV shows must be obese. Instead of just one: Hugo on Lost. Of course, this would present problems for the camera people, trying to fit more than two people on screen at one time. Think extreme long shots.

Law No. 14: Products aimed at middle-aged people and older must not contain fine print. We can’t read it without a magnifying glass with the power of the Hubble.

Law No. 15: Viagra and other erectile dysfunction products can only be obtained with spousal permission. “Sorry, Harry, I gave that up when you started with the comb-overs and pulling your pants up above your fat roll.”

Law No. 16: Photos on frozen dinners must accurately represent the contents. Which means a picture of desiccated brown chunks of a chopped, pressed and formed beef-like substance in a gelatinous, caramel-colored, salty puddle of goop served with limp, spongy, gray string beans in a yellow-dyed, margarine-flavored sauce. Don’t forget the super-sweet, plasticy-tasting, burnt-and-hard-on-one-side-gooey-and-mucky-on-the-other-side, brownie-like cake thing. Mmmmm. Is it time for dinner yet?

Law No. 17: Limit snack manufacturers to only 10 percent extra space in the packaging for “settling of contents.” On most snack packages, the first ingredient on the list should be “air.” Bags of chips, especially. How many times have I bought a big bag of fancy-schmancy expensive potato chips only to find five chips and a few crumbs at the bottom of the bag? This kind of bait-and-switch always makes me feel stupid. I should only feel stupid for stuffing a bunch of fat in my body, not for buying the chips in the first place.

I’d love to hear similar ideas for laws from my readers. Click Contact Janet to send me your suggestions. I’ll print the best either here and/or in CoastViews Magazine, or both. First place winner gets a copy of my book. Second place gets two books. Deadline: July 31, 2010.

©2010, Janet Periat

Glossary For Modern Times

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Word meanings are fluid. Some change and some stay the same depending on what’s going on in the world. Since we are in a huge state of flux right now, I thought it would be good to clarify some current terms.

Congress: 1. The opposite of progress*. 2. A group of rich people with bad hair who take advantage of loopholes in the law to give themselves raises and nicer offices. 3. Government-sanctioned prostitutes. (See Senators and Lobbyists)

Senators: 1. A group of rich people who attended Ivy League schools to forge superficial relationships with people they don’t like in order to run for office to increase their family fortunes. 2. A group of ugly rich people in Washington DC who wear suits and blow through all the tax money extorted from the middle class while pretending to care about  “the people” but who are too self-centered to care about anyone but themselves.

Health Plan: 1. A hodgepodge of laws constructed by insurance companies to confuse patients and deny them care. 2. Legal extortion of the healthy middle class. 3. A bill that is paid supposedly to avoid bigger bills in case of emergency, but doesn’t really work that way. 4. A legal Ponzi scheme involving the health care industry, the insurance industry and an army of lawyers.

Republicans: 1. A group of rich old white men with bad hair who want to go back to the 1950s when women and minorities “knew their places”.  2. A political party whose sole purpose is to not let any other political party get anything accomplished. 3. A group of hypocrites who profess to be moral until they’re caught with their mistress in Argentina.

Democrats: 1. A spineless group of people who drive Priuses, do yoga, drink protein shakes and enjoy drumming circles and trips to Tibet. 2. A resident of Berkeley, San Francisco or Santa Cruz, California. 3. Someone who is politically correct to the point of disingenuousness. 4. Crazed pot-smoking hippies who put the lives of newts over the prosperity of chemical plants.

Minority: 1. Anyone who isn’t white, rich and heterosexual.  2. A group of people the Republicans fear and hate and legislate against until three months before the election when they pretend to like them.  3. A group of people who are blamed for everything that goes wrong in America.

Public Education System: 1. A day prison for children designed to destroy their natural curiosity and prepare them for a life of sitting at desks and following orders. 2. An underfunded institution that promotes a lifelong aversion to learning.  3. A brainwashing facility that strips participants of their innate talents, limits their choices and ensures their dependence on the system. 4. A Walmart training facility.

Lobbyists: 1. Corporate prostitutes who sell themselves to politicians in exchange for passing laws that will hurt the environment and the poor. 2. People without morals who try to convince other people without morals to continue committing immoral acts. 3. Soul-eating zombies with a political agenda. (See Congress and Senators)

Fast Food: 1. A food-shaped substance that imitates real food and has no nutritional value. 2. A delicious combination of salt, sugar, fat and preservatives that shortens the human life span.

Television: 1. A box that displays a lifestyle you will never be able to afford. 2. A mind-control device that makes the user feel fat, smelly, stupid and lazy. 3. A machine that eats time. 4. A device that facilitates and promotes depression.

Computer: 1. A data processing device that rarely does what you want it to and randomly destroys data. 2. A box that sucks in money and spits out porn.

Internet: 1. A place where bad news gets endlessly recycled far past its relevance. 2. A place to connect with freaks like you. 3. A place to farm virtual land and grow virtual crops and have virtual wars without really accomplishing anything at all. (See Television and Computer)

Marriage: 1. An institution involving two deluded people who actually think that by saying a bunch of magic words their significant other won’t cheat on them or abuse them or take out all their savings to invest in a pyramid scheme. 2. A sacred bond between a man and a woman that gay people have adopted and are now kicking themselves for it. 3. An extortion scheme designed by the bridal industry to get money out of stupid people who think that if they spend a lot on the ceremony it might actually translate into a lasting relationship. 4. A financial agreement between two people who like to sleep with each other and think that by getting financially involved it might promote some sort of bond between them.

Medical Marijuana: Marijuana that is obtained at a dispensary with a fake doctor’s note so stoners don’t have to pretend to be interested in their drug dealer’s boring lives.

Tea-Partiers: (syn: Tea-Baggers) 1. A group of disenfranchised white people who like to yell the n-word. 2. A group of stupid people who think that stupid people should run the world.

The Religious Right: 1. People who use God and the Bible as reasons to persecute people they don’t like. 2. Fearful people who say “they shouldn’t let them do that” a lot. 3. People who send money to men on television with bad hair who preach about morals until they get caught on video with a roomful of prostitutes. (See Congress, Senators, Lobbyists)

The Media: A conglomerate of organizations that twist and distort reality in order to force their users to watch or read paid advertisements.

Liberals: 1. A group of open-minded people who are easily influenced and can’t make decisions. 2. People who miss the Summer of Love. 3. People who think Al Gore is cool.

Conservatives: 1. Fat, bald white guys who hate and fear everything. 2. People with anger issues who love to shout at liberals. 3. Closeted gay people who like having sex in public restrooms.

*Heard this from the comedian Gallagher.

©2010, Janet Periat

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