As Brown Ascends to PM, Drunken Sailors Reject Comparison

LONDON. As he prepares to leave No. 11 Downing Street and move to No. 10 when he becomes Prime Minister this summer, Gordon Brown looks back on his legacy as Chancellor of the Exchequer with a mixture of pride and regret at goals he pursued, but failed to achieve.

 

Gordon Brown:  “Favorite song?  I’d have to say ‘Taxman’ by The Beatles.”

“We got the tax code up to 8,300 pages,” Brown says a bit wistfully. “I would have liked to have broken 10,000, but I couldn’t get a prescription for steroids” through Britain’s notoriously slow National Health Service.

“If Brown would give us money for talcum powder I wouldn’t have this problem.”

The former rugby player has firmly established his legacy in another respect, however; a spender of historic proportions, raising taxes 99 times according to his Conservative Party opponents, and squandering much of that money on marginal items such as schools, hospitals and transport while basic needs such as the Prince’s polo pony stables are neglected.

Drunken sailors:  “I find the comparison odorous, or odious–whatever.”

Brown’s penchant for taxing and spending has given his opponents a vivid bucket of paint with which to color him in the run-up to parliamentary elections in 2010. “Brown spends like a drunken sailor,” says George Osborne, the shadow finance minister. That charge has drawn fire not from Labour Party members but from another unexpected source; Britain’s many drunken sailors–military, merchant and pleasure.

Pink Pot Pub, Thursday night:  “I’m Hen-e-ry the VIIIth I am!”

“I resent the comparison,” says Peter Bishop, who sailed to Argentina to re-capture the Falkland Islands when Margaret Thatcher checked her spice cabinent in 1982 and found they were missing. “I always spent responsibly, leaving enough money for a taxi ride back to my ship and a packet of crisps to settle my stomach,” he explains from his regular chair at the Pink Pot, a Tottenham Court Road pub where he joins in karaoke every Thursday night.

Larkin:  “We want the money for ourselves at home, so people can spend three pounds, ninety-nine pence on poems.”

Michael Aylward, a seaman in the British Merchant Marine on 24-hour shore leave in Liverpool, concurs. “I never conducted myself as Brown has,” he says as he shifts a heavily made-up woman he calls “Trixie” from his right knee to his left. “Reading poetry, vacationing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts like a bloody Yank,” he says with disgust. “That sort of trip would cost me a year’s salary, even if I didn’t splurge and buy The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin to read on the beach.” Brown is a poetry-lover and frequently asks Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, for recommendations on English football wagers.

Michael Aylward and “Trixie”

The British office of “Chancellor of the Exchequer” is the cabinet minister responsible for balancing the checkbooks of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is the equivalent of the shortstop position in American baseball, and goalie in ice hockey. “It’s not too tough until you get to Ireland,” noted former chancellor Ian Smith-Watkins. “They come up with all sorts of IOU’s they forgot to mark down in the register, and they’re always overdrawn.”

“We’d been drinking gin and tonics for several hours, and had somehow blown off course.”

Pleasure boatsmen, while just as vehement in their rejection of any similarity between their own spending habits and Brown’s, were somewhat more sympathetic. “I understand he was blinded in one eye during a rugby game while at Edinburgh Univeristy,” says Philip Masterson aboard his 50-foot yacht “Diffident”. “Sometimes when I drink too much I can’t see out of either.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

As IRS Shuts Law Firm, Locals Face Hard Choice

DALLAS.  Mindy Sue Griswold is a waitress in a pancake restaurant who usually doesn’t pay attention to local news unless there’s been a grisly society murder or pet kidnapping.  “I can’t bother with anything other than the weather,” she says as she lifts her arms to cool her ‘pits’ on a particularly hot spring day.

“Who ordered pigs-in-a-blanket?”

But Mindy has been following the decline and fall of the law firm of Short & Armstrong as if it were a long-running soap opera.  “They represented my first husband, and he got joint custody,” she says bitterly.  “Everytime he shows up to take the kids away, it reminds me of the little needle-dick bug-humper who represented him.”  Her loyalties are divided, however, because of who’s trying to shut the firm down–the IRS.

1998 Toyota Corolla:  Mindy Sue’s “wheels”

“The IRS took my car last spring ’cause they said I didn’t pay taxes on tips,” she grumbles.  “They should come in here sometime and see some of the cheap bastards I have to deal with every day.”

Beefalo:  You could take the deduction, or you could just eat it.

The city is divided over who wears the white and the black hats in the long struggle between the law firm, which packaged, processed and sold “beefalo” tax shelters to its clients during the early years of the 21st century, and the Internal Revenue Service, which is a different kind of animal–a bete noire–to those exposed to the boom-and-bust cycle of the Texas economy.

“If we don’t hit oil soon, my first wife is gonna own this rig.”

“It’s like the war between Iran and Iraq,” say Gene Ray Holcomb, who lost his drilling company to a former business partner and his home to the IRS.  “There ought to be some way they could both lose.”

“I’m sorry, your credit card was rejected–Mr. Big Shot Attorney Man.”

Short & Armstrong will pay a fine of $75 million to the IRS to avoid criminal prosecution, leaving nothing for its smaller creditors.  “I got a bill for $37 for paper clips that they been stallin’ me on for months,” says Deborah Rogers, manager of Joe Rogers Office Supply Depot in suburban Arlington.  “Staples cut them off and we were the only thing holding a lot of their memos together there at the end.”

“See–you’re going to owe it to us anyway, so what’s the point of fighting?”

Under federal bankruptcy law, claims for unpaid taxes take priority over monies owed to ordinary schmucks.  “We come first because we’re the government,” says IRS District Superintendent Marshall Emerson.  “If we didn’t, people would, then we’d just take it from them in taxes, so this cuts out the middle man.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Draft Needs Shift as NFL Keeps Coin-Toss Overtime Format

PHOENIX.  As the NFL’s competition committee emerged from a closed-door session and announced that the league would retain its current overtime format in which the correct call of a coin toss almost inevitably produces a win, player personnel vice presidents began to reconsider their special teams needs.

Dungy with top prospect:  “He can feel the weather in his bones.”

“We need a guy who can process a lot of information in a very short period of time,” said Scott Pioli of the New England Patriots.  “We’re looking at Weng Chen, a 185-pound physics major from MIT who had a 4.3 second time in the quadratic equation at the NFL Draft Combine.”

Bob Dylan:  Contrary to what he said, you do need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Indianapolis head coach Tony Dungy said the Colts would forego the Patriots’ cerebral approach in favor of a meteorology major, probably Al Salerno of Eastern Michigan if he is available.  “Otherwise we may see who’s available in the free agent market after sweeps week among local TV weathermen.”

Scouts at the NFL Draft Combine:  “This kid tends to get nervous and call tails when the pocket collapses around him.”

Last season 64% of NFL teams that won the overtime coin toss went on to win the game, 35% lost, and the remaining 1% were abducted by aliens and sold to Arena Football League teams.

“Resistance is futile–we are taking you to the Quad City Steamrollers.”

Contrary to popular belief, a random series of coin tosses using a statistically-valid sample will not produce an equal number of “heads” and “tails”, with the precise variation depending on the type of coin.  “George Washington wears that wig, so you’ve got to keep that in mind when the ref breaks out a quarter,” says Baltimore Ravens coin toss specialist Michael Gerrard.  “Sacagawea’s got that baby on her back, which throws guys off and then you have to do an on-side kick.”

The sleeper of the draft may be Ricky Theobald, of Tula, Mississippi, who did not play college football but who has worked at a convenience store since he was fourteen.

Ricky Theobald:  He can count the whiskers on Lincoln’s chin.

“The kid has an incredible feel for the game,” says New York Jets’ head coach Eric Mangini.  “He can tell you whether the Roosevelt on your dime is in his first or his fourth term as President.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

EPA: Youth Sports Trophies To Fill US Landfills by 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C.  The Environmental Protection Agency today released projections indicating that the nation’s landfills will reach capacity in less than three years if current trends in the disposal of youth sports trophies continue.

“You get a trophy for hitting the ball off the T–or not.”

“The crisis in youth sports trophies will make global warming looking like Jiffy Pop,” said EPA Administrator Steve Johnson, reading from a prepared statement prepared by somebody else.  Jiffy Pop, a popcorn product manufactred by ConAgra, is believed to be the only family fun treat that comes in a self-contained popping pan.

 

“Your grandson got a trophy for just showing up?  Terrific, but not sustainable.”

Environmentalists have warned for years that the practice of awarding trophies to children who participate in youth sports without regard to merit would exhaust landfill capacity and contribute to contamination of water supplies when metal plates bearing inscriptions such as “MetroWest KinderKick Runners-Up” and “Neosho County Girls Volleyball Good Sports Award” decompose.  “It’s nice to have one of our predictions come true for once,” said Natalie Gibson, a fundraiser for the Sierra Club in New Hampshire who faces resistance from potential donors who say they would prefer global warming to hard New England winters.

Jiffy Pop

Standards for awarding trophies have eroded over the years as the self-esteem movement persuaded educators and youth sports coaches that denying cheap statues to participants might trigger pre-teen suicides.  “You never know what’s going to set a kid off,” says coach Jeff Allenson of the Seekonk, Massachusetts, Sharks, a ”squirt” level hockey team.  “My kids threaten to slit their wrists when they get the wrong Happy Meal toy at McDonald’s, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“I wanted Buzz Lightyear!”

When children of the baby-boomer generation began to go off to college a few years ago, a “perfect storm” of youth soccer, karate, baseball and hockey trophies began to make its way towards the nation’s garbage dumps, crowding out newsprint, disposable diapers and Simon & Garfunkel albums.  “We tried melting them down, but that released carcinogens,” says Errol Wolf, Superintendent of the Department of Public Works in Orono, Maine.  “We gave them to the beavers to build their lodges, but they wouldn’t use them because they’re too tacky.”

“3-2-1–hey, did you really get a hat trick in Mini-Mites hockey?”

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has indicated it has room to carry some discarded trophies on the International Space Station, from which they could be launched beyond our solar system.  “Our only concern is retaliation from whatever we hit,” says NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.  “I hate to imagine what kind of butt-ugly trophies they have in the THX-1138 spiral galaxy.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

As Subprime Loan Defaults Spread, Lawmakers Seek to Ban Metal Bats

WASHINGTON, D.C.  House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told a luncheon meeting of bankers today that he would file legislation to curb abusive collection practices tied to so-called “subprime” loans made to less creditworthy borrowers.

 

Frank:  “You get more power with an aluminum bat, but it goes against the game’s traditions.”

“I’m a traditionalist,” Frank told the American Community Bankers Association.  “A wooden bat was good enough for Ted Williams,” the Boston Red Sox outfield who was the last player to bat .400.  “I don’t know why any debt collector would need to use an aluminum bat.”

Ted Williams

Salvatore Massa, a repossession man who works for Northeast Adjustment Bureau of Chelsea, Massachusetts, said aluminum bats were necessary if debt collectors were to keep pace with new pitches throw at them by defaulting consumers.  “I had a guy last week tell me he was going in his mobile home to get his checkbook, when all of a sudden–boom!–he takes off running,” Massa said.  “There’s no way I could hit something like that with a heavy wooden bat.”

Repo man would rather die on his feet than live on his knees.

Other rules under consideration by Frank include a requirement that debt collectors give borrowers time to remove personal belongings from motor vehicles before towing them away.  “Say the repo man’s got you cornered outside your house, but your girlfriend’s in the front seat,” says National Consumer Law Center Executive Director Eric Friedling.  “He should have to count to ten before he hooks your back axle up to the tow truck, otherwise ‘Cindy’ or whatever her name is might get a run in her stocking jumping out of your car.”

“Actually, if you’re going back to Rocco’s Texaco, I may just ride along with you.”

Repossession specialists say Frank’s initiative is misguided, and that they are not to blame for imprudent loans made to marginal borrowers under loose credit standards.  “Ultimately what is needed is better education,” says Northeast Adjustment’s Massa.  “Like, don’t ever double park your car outside a gas station with a German shepherd out front.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Shrink Mag to Feature Nude Pix in Next Issue

NEW YORK.  The Journal of Psychoanalytical Studies, the leading academic publication dedicated to the thought of Sigmund Freud and his intellectual descendants, says it will give in to economic pressures next month and add nude pictures of leading female practitioners and patients to the magazine’s pages beginning with the spring issue, due to arrive in libraries and analysts’ offices this month.

 “You appear to have an oral fixation, a repressed libido, and a bodacious set of ta-tas.”

“Freudians have always been accused of having sex on the brain,” said Editor-in-Chief Brian Schletzschoff.  “I don’t know why we ever let Playboy get out in front of us when it comes to breasts.”

Skinner:  “My pigeons will spot you five points and still whup your ass in ping-pong.”

Freud was criticized in his time, and his influence has waned as more rigorous research has demonstrated that men are more interested in televised sports than sex, but he remains one of the most imposing figures of modern intellectual history.  “After Freud, the next most important psychologist of the modern era is B.F. Skinner, who seemed more interested in teaching pigeons how to play ping-pong than human sexuality,” noted Karl Friedrich of the University of Illinois-Chicago.  “If Skinner’s ideas had prevailed over Freud’s, the consequences for western civilization would have been enormous,” Friedrich noted, “with hybrid human-pigeons walking the streets naked, eating from discarded snack food bags, much like a Big 10 college campus on the morning after a big game.”

Kinsey:  “How many times a day do you consider ’a lot’?”

The only other claimant to the throne of top dog of twentieth-century psychology is Alfred Kinsey, the American biologist who embarked upon a monumental study of human sexuality after abandoning his first love, the gull-wing wasp.  “After Alfred discovered that a woman sitting on his lap felt better than a gull-wing wasp down his pants, he was a changed man,” noted Louise Boganovich, one of Kinsey’s last research subjects. “He came to prefer women, even though the wasps were cheaper dates since they didn’t eat as much and weren’t interested in movies.”

Gisele Bundchen and Anna Freud

The first centerfold to be featured by The Journal of Psychoanalytical Studies will be Anna Freud, the sixth daughter of Sigmund who Schletzschoff says is “remarkably well-preserved” for a woman who died in 1982.  “We were lucky to get her after we found out Gisele Bundchen was busy.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Anti-Bully Laws Stall as Young Toughs Pummel Lawmakers

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  When state senator Bob Reisdorph (D-Pettis County) was a teenager, he was teased unmercifully by a boy whose name and face are etched in his memory.  “Jimmy Dale Embree would wait for me to come out of Garst’s,” a 50’s-style drive-in restaurant in Sedalia.  “Then he and his gang would throw ketchup packs at me,” staining Reisdorph’s clothes and, more importantly, his sense of self-esteem.

Garst’s:  Scene of the crime.

Four decades later, Reisdorph is fighting back the only way he knows how; by filing legislation to create penalties for bullying, and making “aggravated” bullying punishable by jail, with no ability to avoid prison by paying a fine.  “We as a society have got to stand up collectively to bullies, since there are so many who are unable to do so individually.”

Bully’s weapon of choice.

The bill is the sort of feel-good legislation that ought to pass both houses of the legislature in a breeze, as has been the case with similar laws in twenty-seven other states.  There’s just one problem:  “Jimmy Dale Embree, Jr.”, Reisdorph says as he looks warily over his shoulder before dashing to his car, which is parked in a reserved space outside the state Capitol.

Reisdorph as a teen-aged bully magnet.

As the state legislator hits his stride, a reporter hears cries go up from a gang of young boys who have been hiding under the portico that runs along the front of the building.  “There he is,” shouts one.  “Get him!” yells another.  They give chase, and before Reisdorph can open his car door they bombard him with water balloons before a member of the State Police arrives, causing the boys to scatter.

Jimmy Dale, Jr.:  “Why do I do it?  ‘Cause it’s fun!”

Reisdorph is the victim of what political analysts have dubbed “bully-lobbying”–grass-roots efforts to forestall, water down or even kill anti-bullying bills before they become law.  “I was a bully, and I want my kid to be a bully too,” says Jimmy Dale Embree, Sr., who is now a 55 year-old long-haul truck driver with a front yard filled with his prize-winning collection of rusted-out junk cars.  “If we are going to prepare our kids to compete in a global economy, we need to teach them to be tough and resilient,” Jimmy Dale, Sr. says as he spits snuff juice into a topless 7-Up can.

“If you file that bill today, your ass is grass and I’m a lawnmower.”

Child development specialists are unanimous in their support of anti-bullying measures, but former bullies have recently begun to challenge their methodology.  “A lot of them don’t use statistically valid samples, and the guys who write them are–I don’t know how to put this any other way–dinks,” says Earl “Duck’s Ass” Bennett, who dropped out of Joliet, Illinois Central High School in 1959 and is now loading dock supervisor for Central States Tool and Die Company.  “When I confront them at academic conferences and express my concerns, they inevitably back away from their conclusions.”

“I can’t believe she called me a nimmy-not!”

All of which is fine with Reisdorph, who says he welcomes a robust debate on the subject when his bill comes up for its first hearing later this spring.  “I want to hear all points of view,” he says with a nervous look on his face as pulls out of the parking lot leaving Jimmy Dale, Jr. and his gang in a cloud of gravel dust.  “Just please, please, please don’t let them stuff me under the Senate podium again!”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

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Dodgeball Revival Grows As Upscale Parents Fight Back

GREENWICH, Connecticut.  Liam Nelson is a scrawny sixth-grader who’s short for his age.  His dad, Terry Nelson, is manager of a hedge fund that generated an eye-popping 23% return for investors in 2006.  “Liam gets picked on during gym class,” says his mother Caroline.  “And we’re fine with that.”

 

The Nelsons’ modest $13 million home.

The Nelsons are part of a growing backlash among upscale parents against efforts to eliminate dodgeball from physical education programs across the country.  “It builds character,” says Terry Nelson.  “Or at least it generates resentment that a kid can store up while he’s young and then inflict on the world for the rest of his life.”

“Get Liam!”

Dodgeball had been in decline as an indoor activity in kindergarden through 12th grade physical education classes due to concerns that it subordinated aerobic exercise to children’s innate aggressive instincts.  It gradually lost favor as educational experts pushed less confrontational games such as “Neutrality Ball”, in which students break up into “Swedish” and “Swiss” teams and eat fondue.

“Neutrality is totally awesome!”

Old-school gym teachers who resisted the trend were marginalized, forced to man school crossing guard posts or rake girls’ softball infields.  “We played dodgeball when I was a kid, and it didn’t hurt none of us,” says Elwood “Chick” Grayson, a janitor at the exclusive private school Liam Nelson attends.  “‘Course, by ‘us’ I don’t mean the geeks.  We’d pummel them until their faces turned to applesauce.”

“Okay, big kids over against that wall, dweebs over here.”

Which is precisely the point, according to the Nelsons.  “Losers in life are winners at dodgeball, and vice versa,” says Terry Nelson.  And indeed, his regular Sunday golf foursome includes a corporate lawyer, a venture capitalist and a corporate CEO, all former dodgeball targets who say they were on the receiving end of deadly, high-speed strikes that left imprints that can be seen to this day.  “Look at this,” says Terry Nelson, dropping his Brooks Brothers boxer shorts to reveal a scar on his buttocks.  “See–it says ‘Moisten needle before inserting’.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Don King, Pope Meet, Find Each Other “Molto Simpatico”

VATICAN CITY.  Pope Benedict XVI met with American boxing promoter Don King today in a session that the Vatican press office described as “cordial and productive.”

Separated at birth: Don King and Pope St. Leo I

“His Holiness noted the similarities between his mitre and Mr. King’s hair, which we understand was the inspiration for the Chia Pet,” said Antonio Lena, boxing reporter for L’Osservatore Roman, the Vatin’s newspaper.

Chia pets: Welterweight, middleweight, and heavyweight models.

King was in Rome to discuss possible boxing matches, and the Pope was in Rome because he lives in Vatican City, the only city that is also a country located within another country’s city.  “Don-a King eesa my favorita ex-con boxing personality,” said the Pope, who is German but is required by Roman Catholic canon law to speak with a phony Italian accent.  “Our Lord said ‘Blessed are the poor’, and every boxer Don-a works with ends up penniless.”

“Do you put the mousse in it before you blow it out, or after?”

King had hoped to obtain a private meeting with the Pope but succeeded only in reaching the front row of an open-air public audience where he handed the Pope a green-and-gold boxing belt as the Pope cruised by in an open Jeep.  “Damn, man,” King said with disappointment.  “He’s the Vicar of Christ on Earth, but does he know that I got my own web site?”

The Pope and King share a fondness for flamboyant clothes, and the Pope signaled his approval for King’s stars-and-stripes cardigan with a nod of his head and a thumbs-up sign as he passed by, saying ”That eesa one-a bad-assa sweater, man!”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Gillette Introduces First Nuclear-Powered Razor

BOSTON.  A low-rise building on this city’s shore proclaims itself “World Shaving Headquarters”, and it was indeed here that the Gillette Company perfected the safety razor a century ago.  “The Gillette Company has always been an innovator,” according to consumer products analyst Jan King.  “They stay a step ahead of the competition, or else they step on them.”

Gillette’s “World Shaving Headquarters”

Gillette was the first manufacturer to add a second blade to its razors, and then a third after the success of its double-bladed razors spawned copy-cat models.  Now industry analysts say the company is ready to up the ante again when it introduces the first nuclear-powered razor this spring.

Caution: Wear hazmat gear when shaving.

“Once you’ve gone to three blades, the nuclear option is inevitable,” said Carl Thomas, a spokesman for Procter & Gamble, which bought Gillette for $57 billion in 2005.  “We could sit back while podunk powers like Pakistan develop nuclear razors, or we could get out in front by seizing the first-mover advantage and other business magazine cliches.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Azia:  “I get a clean, close shave using conventional weapons.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce has given Gillette tentative approval to license the new technology despite concerns in some quarters that the product will encourage rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to accelerate their nuclear programs.  “The Iranians don’t shave, and the Koreans can’t grow beards, so I think we’re all set there,” said Nicholas Haskell, Under Assistant Secretary of Men’s Toiletries.

Kim Jong Il:  “I don’t need a razor, but as long as you’re up could you get me another Kirin Light?”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the new razor was further evidence of America’s hostile intentions towards his country, as evidenced by an anti-Iranian joke he said Alejandro Wolff, the current US ambassador to the UN, told to a group of American high school students attending a Model United Nations session.  “Why do Iranian men grow beards?” Wolff reportedly asked.  “To hide their weak chins.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman