I came into Top Chef late in the game, only really watching in full this past season. It just ended, so I won't spoil the ending outright, but the result of tonight's finale was endemic of everything that is wrong with what is otherwise a reasonably good piece of reality television.
Here's the thing. They have to stop judging meal to meal. If someone can excel time after time and then get ejected on a technicality or a mis-timed misstep, you're not likely to actually end up with the best person as Top Chef.
So from now on, they will need to judge each contestant cumulatively. Now I know why they don't currently do this. It's because if someone starts to run away with the competition, they will lose any sense of drama, and thus ratings.
Unless they find a new way to spice things up. First, in addition to the judges, the chefs will judge each others' dishes. This will shake up the results. Second, chefs will be allowed to poison dished, but they can't dictate who gets what plate. So they may end up killing a judge, in which case they are sent home immediately.
Also, the first challenge of the next season will be cooking and eating Toby Young, thus solving the dual problems of Toby Young and the irrational vilification of cannibalism.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Politicians.
We have a bit of a problem with our politicians being disgraced, indicted, and passing laws that well and truly screw us. Luckily, this is a pretty easy fix.
First, anytime someone runs for office, the attorney general of their state will launch an immediate probe into them for anything they have vowed to fight. If a politician vows to be a beacon in the fog of corruption, we will tap their phones and dig into their finances. If they claim to hate homosexuality or any form of sexual impropriety, they will be tailed to see if they are coming onto underage staffers or cruising in public restrooms. If they are running on a campaign restoring dignity to an office, they will be tested for any signs of dignity.
Believe me, this will save us a lot of re-elections and emergency appointments.
Second, as stated before, no politician will be able to vote on a bill unless they can prove they understand what it means.
Finally, all lobbyists will be sent to companies for medical, pharmaceutical, and beauty product testing, replacing the animals they currently use, thus helping solve the problem of animal cruelty.
First, anytime someone runs for office, the attorney general of their state will launch an immediate probe into them for anything they have vowed to fight. If a politician vows to be a beacon in the fog of corruption, we will tap their phones and dig into their finances. If they claim to hate homosexuality or any form of sexual impropriety, they will be tailed to see if they are coming onto underage staffers or cruising in public restrooms. If they are running on a campaign restoring dignity to an office, they will be tested for any signs of dignity.
Believe me, this will save us a lot of re-elections and emergency appointments.
Second, as stated before, no politician will be able to vote on a bill unless they can prove they understand what it means.
Finally, all lobbyists will be sent to companies for medical, pharmaceutical, and beauty product testing, replacing the animals they currently use, thus helping solve the problem of animal cruelty.
This fucking economy.
Let's talk about the big elephant in the room: the decaying corpse that is our economy.
I'm going to be honest. This one isn't going to be easy. But it will be a whole lot easier if all the experts would just stop making it worse. So let's fix it.
The health of the economy is simply a matter of perception. If everyone thinks things are fine, they'll keep spending money and investing and all that crap people with money do. But people tell them the economy is bad, and then the people with the money shove it in rich people matresses (banks), shove it in super-rich people matresses (Swiss banks) or give it to Ponzi schemers to piss away.
So, first things first. Any experts or pundits found making public statements that the economy is troubled will be put to death. Their organs will be harvested, thus helping solve the problem of people dying. The remains will be fed to the polar bears.
Politicians who do not hold an advanced degree in economics from a respectable institution of higher learning will not be allowed to publicly disparage the efficacy of an economic package. In fact, in order to vote on any given bill, politicians will be required to pass a short aptitude test on the subject of the legislation. The exam will be written by a non-partisan group of experts. This will solve the problem of terrible laws being passed.
The government will then pay unemployed people to be the new experts and pundits, who will tell people to go ahead and invest their money and buy stuff. This will help solve unemployment and get money back into the economy.
Next, we'll convert all publicly traded companies back into private companies. With no stocks, there will be no more stockmarket crashes. There will also be no more stockbrokers.
In fact, any job wherein you are not producing a good or providing a service that can be explained to a 6 year-old will be eliminated. These are jobs that siphon money out of the economy and give it to people who buy yachts and name them "Camilleon." Stockbrokers will be given jobs as stockboys so they can keep their existing business cards with minor modifications.
With no board of directors or stockholders to answer to, companies will be held accountable for their actions at the executive level. All white collar crimes will be punishable by death.
The myth of corporate citizenship will also be put to death, so companies can't pretend they have all the rights of a person with none of the responsibilities. Companies will no longer be able to call campaign donation caps a violation of their right to free speech. This will help put an end to companies owning our government, and then making them pass laws that benefit them in the short-term while dooming the long-term health of the economy.
So, in short: stop calling it a depression before it's a depression. No more jobs that can't be explained in under 30 seconds at a dinner party. Corporations stop trying to suck the life out of people like they're wheatgrass at a Jamba Juice. Bing bang boom, economy's fixed.
I'm going to be honest. This one isn't going to be easy. But it will be a whole lot easier if all the experts would just stop making it worse. So let's fix it.
The health of the economy is simply a matter of perception. If everyone thinks things are fine, they'll keep spending money and investing and all that crap people with money do. But people tell them the economy is bad, and then the people with the money shove it in rich people matresses (banks), shove it in super-rich people matresses (Swiss banks) or give it to Ponzi schemers to piss away.
So, first things first. Any experts or pundits found making public statements that the economy is troubled will be put to death. Their organs will be harvested, thus helping solve the problem of people dying. The remains will be fed to the polar bears.
Politicians who do not hold an advanced degree in economics from a respectable institution of higher learning will not be allowed to publicly disparage the efficacy of an economic package. In fact, in order to vote on any given bill, politicians will be required to pass a short aptitude test on the subject of the legislation. The exam will be written by a non-partisan group of experts. This will solve the problem of terrible laws being passed.
The government will then pay unemployed people to be the new experts and pundits, who will tell people to go ahead and invest their money and buy stuff. This will help solve unemployment and get money back into the economy.
Next, we'll convert all publicly traded companies back into private companies. With no stocks, there will be no more stockmarket crashes. There will also be no more stockbrokers.
In fact, any job wherein you are not producing a good or providing a service that can be explained to a 6 year-old will be eliminated. These are jobs that siphon money out of the economy and give it to people who buy yachts and name them "Camilleon." Stockbrokers will be given jobs as stockboys so they can keep their existing business cards with minor modifications.
With no board of directors or stockholders to answer to, companies will be held accountable for their actions at the executive level. All white collar crimes will be punishable by death.
The myth of corporate citizenship will also be put to death, so companies can't pretend they have all the rights of a person with none of the responsibilities. Companies will no longer be able to call campaign donation caps a violation of their right to free speech. This will help put an end to companies owning our government, and then making them pass laws that benefit them in the short-term while dooming the long-term health of the economy.
So, in short: stop calling it a depression before it's a depression. No more jobs that can't be explained in under 30 seconds at a dinner party. Corporations stop trying to suck the life out of people like they're wheatgrass at a Jamba Juice. Bing bang boom, economy's fixed.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The melting of the ice caps.
A common mistake "experts" make when attempting to address a problem is to attempt to solve the problem at its source. This is ridiculous. You must attack the symptoms.
Take global warming. For years men and women of science (scientologists) have been trying to reverse global warming. They even tried to to trick it by renaming it climate change. This was foolish. Global warming is not self-aware.
No, the way to fix climate change (the preferred nomenclature when it is cold outside and you want to convince people something exists when their door handle is frozen shut and they have to climb in their car from the passenger side) is to solve each of its many manifestations.
Today, we solve the melting of the ice caps.
The ice caps are giant sheets of ice, held in place at the top and bottom of the world by a striped barber pole that runs through the center of the earth. Due to climate change, they are melting, contributing to a variety of weather-related phenomena and threatening to kill off the polar bears and penguins, two of our planet's primary sources of cute.
The solution to this problem is to put thousands of refrigerators and air conditioners at the poles. How will we power them? Solar power, of course. We will train the bears to use the refrigerators. They will use the ice-makers in the doors of these refrigerators and scatter the ice around the area. The air conditioners will lower the temperature so the cubes can freeze into new ice caps. The refrigerators will also allow the bears to preserve and store their food, which will help them stay well-fed until their eco-system has stabilized.
Who will train these bears to use refrigerators? The zoologists who will lose their jobs when we solve the problem of zoos being kind of sad and creepy.
Who will provide the refrigerators and air conditioners? They will be built in factories staffed by formerly unemployed workers, part of our solution to this fucking economy.
Who will pay for these factories? The oil companies. They still owe aquatic wildlife a solid. This will square things.
With the ice caps problem all sewn up, we can turn our attention to the other symptoms of climate change. But that's for another day.
Take global warming. For years men and women of science (scientologists) have been trying to reverse global warming. They even tried to to trick it by renaming it climate change. This was foolish. Global warming is not self-aware.
No, the way to fix climate change (the preferred nomenclature when it is cold outside and you want to convince people something exists when their door handle is frozen shut and they have to climb in their car from the passenger side) is to solve each of its many manifestations.
Today, we solve the melting of the ice caps.
The ice caps are giant sheets of ice, held in place at the top and bottom of the world by a striped barber pole that runs through the center of the earth. Due to climate change, they are melting, contributing to a variety of weather-related phenomena and threatening to kill off the polar bears and penguins, two of our planet's primary sources of cute.
The solution to this problem is to put thousands of refrigerators and air conditioners at the poles. How will we power them? Solar power, of course. We will train the bears to use the refrigerators. They will use the ice-makers in the doors of these refrigerators and scatter the ice around the area. The air conditioners will lower the temperature so the cubes can freeze into new ice caps. The refrigerators will also allow the bears to preserve and store their food, which will help them stay well-fed until their eco-system has stabilized.
Who will train these bears to use refrigerators? The zoologists who will lose their jobs when we solve the problem of zoos being kind of sad and creepy.
Who will provide the refrigerators and air conditioners? They will be built in factories staffed by formerly unemployed workers, part of our solution to this fucking economy.
Who will pay for these factories? The oil companies. They still owe aquatic wildlife a solid. This will square things.
With the ice caps problem all sewn up, we can turn our attention to the other symptoms of climate change. But that's for another day.
Introduction and the eradication of hurricanes.
Hello, and welcome to "No need to thank me." This is a blog wherein I solve the world's problems. You may be wondering how I am able to succeed where the greatest minds of the world of failed. The answer is simple.
Solving one problem creates more problems. It's the nature of the universe. Everything is interrelated. So I'm not solving one problem at a time. I'm solving them all.
I'm sure you've heard of Chaos Theory, which was invented by Jeff Goldblum. It states that the movement of air from a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. This brings us to our first solution:
There will be no more hurricanes if we kill all the butterflies.
Ah, but what of the butterflies' natural predators? Simple, we will dye moths to look like butterflies; they will eat the moths instead. This will also solve the problem of moths eating your sweaters and is part of the solution to animals that confuse me because they are too similar.
Where will we get all the dye for the moths? We will take it from the goths, the first step in solving the problem of goths annoying the fuck out of everybody.
But what of lepidopterists, whose hobby is the collection and study of butterflies? They will now collect stamps. The resulting increase in the demand for stamps will help stabilize the floundering U.S. Post Office.
No need to thank me.
Technical note:
As I add the components to this super--or shall we say, final--solution, I will be cross-linking all of the problems to help latecomers and those whose brains are too small to grasp the complexity of my plan. Early on, many of these will simple link back to the site. Eventually this web of answers to the world's most complicated solutions will be complete, at which point you should look away if your I.Q. is less than 180. Because your head will fucking explode.
Solving one problem creates more problems. It's the nature of the universe. Everything is interrelated. So I'm not solving one problem at a time. I'm solving them all.
I'm sure you've heard of Chaos Theory, which was invented by Jeff Goldblum. It states that the movement of air from a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. This brings us to our first solution:
There will be no more hurricanes if we kill all the butterflies.
Ah, but what of the butterflies' natural predators? Simple, we will dye moths to look like butterflies; they will eat the moths instead. This will also solve the problem of moths eating your sweaters and is part of the solution to animals that confuse me because they are too similar.
Where will we get all the dye for the moths? We will take it from the goths, the first step in solving the problem of goths annoying the fuck out of everybody.
But what of lepidopterists, whose hobby is the collection and study of butterflies? They will now collect stamps. The resulting increase in the demand for stamps will help stabilize the floundering U.S. Post Office.
No need to thank me.
Technical note:
As I add the components to this super--or shall we say, final--solution, I will be cross-linking all of the problems to help latecomers and those whose brains are too small to grasp the complexity of my plan. Early on, many of these will simple link back to the site. Eventually this web of answers to the world's most complicated solutions will be complete, at which point you should look away if your I.Q. is less than 180. Because your head will fucking explode.
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