Fun With Ideas

I'm an idea-lover. I love all kinds of ideas, even stupid ones. These days that means I am perpetually giddy. There are exciting new ideas everywhere I look.

It happened in Australia, but there's no reason it can't happen here, too: A landlord successfully sued a man's family to collect rent remaining on his lease after he died. In the landlord's own words, "A tenant has died. Is that my problem?"

Why isn't anyone doing this here in the United States? I'm seeing a trans-oceanic heartlessness gap! What's great about this idea, apart from the inherent meanness, is that, in principle it shouldn't matter much how the tenant dies or what the landlord may have reasonably expected. Say a landlord allows a 97 year-old man breathing from an oxygen tank, lesions all over his face and hands, and an organ-donor card glued to his forehead, to sign a twenty year lease. Well, that's twenty year's rent guaranteed, isn't it? It's better than predatory lending, you don't just squeeze the mark, you squeeze their offspring to the umpteenth generation. "A daughter of the son of the tenant has died. Is that my problem?"

Here in America, USA Today reports that many schools are experimenting with programs that pay kids to learn. For example a pilot program in a couple of suburban Atlanta schools pays students $8 an hour to study with tutors. This is the sort of idea that's fun not so much in and of itself but for what it inspires.

Let's face it, school kids are smarter than the rest of us. They can learn anything, even things we don't want them to learn. When I was only 15 I knew a dozen things my parents didn't want me to know, and I didn't even have the internet. Kids are even smarter than tutors. So I say, let's take this idea a step further. Let's not just pay them the $8 an hour to learn, let's throw in the $5.85 or whatever we were going to pay the dumb-ass tutor, and let the kids learn whatever they want, however they want, so long as they pass the WASL. If they don't pass the WASL they have to pay it all back, plus interest. If they run away to Australia, their parents have to pay it back. "A high-school student has run away to Australia. Is that the tax-payers' problem?"

[Above Right: Without the internet, I was forced to learn from whatever print materials were available.]

In Ohio we are seeing a Brave New World of creative punishment. A non-homeless salvation Army worker, I'll call him Mr. Smith, stole a Salvation Army kettle containing $250 meant for the homeless. Painesville Judge Michael A. Cicconetti, who has done this sort of thing before, gave Mr. Smith a choice between 90 days in jail or 24 hours being homeless with a GPS tracker to prevent cheating. He opted for the day and night of homelessness. He did it last week, and 7 hours into it was reported as saying "It's not that bad, but I'd hate to have to do this every day, especially in this weather. It's too cold to do it in this." I don't know what he had to say 17 hours later.

Nearly everyone who has written about this thinks it's great. How creative! Now Mr. Smith will know what it's like to be homeless and he won't be so quick to steal from them.

I can think of a lot of other great ways to apply this brilliant creative new idea.

We could force George Bush, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, et al, to go live in Tehran, and THEN bomb the bejeezus out of it, so in the future they won't be so quick to bomb the bejeezus out of people.

If a man committed murder, we could murder that man back, so that next time he would know what being murdered was like and not be so quick to do it. If a man poked another man's eye out, etc.

Maybe these ideas aren't that new.

Hold Still, I'm Aiming

This week’s column is dedicated to the cliché “Low-Hanging Fruit” on account of my having heard it used in sentences no less than five times last week, and, since I can’t chew out my own ear drums, I have been driven mad.

When I think of low-hanging fruit I don’t think of easy things I can do to save money for a corporation. We had apple trees in the back yard when I was eight years old, and stupid kids next door, and so when I think of “low-hanging fruit” I think of stupidity and flinging apples at people’s heads. Not that I would do such a thing, but it feels good to think it.

The biggest stupidity of today, one that can’t go unmentioned, is the stupidity of Al Qaeda in Britain. Let’s reflect on this a minute. These guys have attacked Britain by bombing London. They bombed London! Gee, let me think, now, hasn’t someone tried that before, I’m sure I’ve heard of it, maybe I can find it in, I don’t know, a BOOK somewhere. Oh, yes, here’s this book that says if you bomb London, the first time they say, “Pardon?” It says the second time you bomb them they tell a cutting joke about you that you can’t get because you’re not smart enough. Then the third time you bomb them it makes them angry. So my first apple is for the Al Qaeda cells in Britain who claimed responsibility for last Thursday’s bombings. Stupids!

My second apple is for the members of the city council of Atlanta, Georgia, who are giving serious consideration to a plan to rid downtown Atlanta of panhandlers with a law that states that their presence “contributes to negative perceptions” of Atlanta. That’s right, I’m supposed to think badly of Atlanta if they have panhandlers, like every other city in America or the world, but if they chase their panhandlers down, lock them up, beat them, or send them to someone else’s city I’m supposed to think Atlanta is heaven on Earth.

I can hear the tourists now. “Why look, Martha, this city’s got no poor people! I wonder how they do that?” “Probably it’s because everybody who lives here gets a big cash Christmas present from Ted Turner himself, every year! I’ll bet it’s as much as a thousand dollars!” “You’re probably right, Martha! Hey, let’s sell the farm and move here so we can enjoy the fabulous wealth that oozes up out of the streets in Atlanta!” “Let’s!”

The rest of my apples, for this week, are mushy rotten apples up-side the head for every single local government out there that has instituted or is planning to institute a massive plan to house homeless people without taking the shortage of housing that causes homelessness into account as part of the plan.

It always happens like this: a city official says “Our city can solve homelessness. We will first put the homeless into housing, paying their rent for them to start with. Then we will treat any addictions they have, give them needed training, and they will get jobs, and they will be able to start paying their own way.”

And every time it goes wrong exactly the same way: the affordable housing (what the government is able to bear the cost of) doesn’t exist. One stupid government after another installs these liberal sounding compassionate programs, and one stupid government after another finds out that even a city government can’t find the cheap housing that the homeless people couldn’t find. Because it isn’t there to be found! That’s why so many were homeless, stupids! Have an apple!

Disclaimer: no actual apples were thrown during the writing of this column. The author has in fact never smacked anyone at all with a rotten apple, even including Johnny No Brain and his sister, What’s-Her-Name No Brain, and his half-brother, Big Lips Little Brain, 48 years ago, no matter what they say. Besides, they started it.