[you] Ruined It for Everyone!

Chew on this, America: Enough food is produced in the U.S. to supply thirty-eight hundred calories every day for every man, woman, and child. The average adult only needs two thousand to twenty-five hundred calories per day.

Do you want to lose weight? Then stop eating so much! Eat small, healthy meals, exercise regularly, and avoid piggin’ out. And then guess what? You WILL lose weight. If you don’t, then just get your stomach stapled.

№075 Phil Gramm

For legalizing deregulation.

THE FACTS

Remember that dick, Dick Fuld, from RIFE N^o029, and the douche bags from №067? Without the guy you’re about to read about, none of them would have been able to screw up our lives. Phil Gramm served as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee in the late nineties. He was a proponent of financial deregulation. He wrote and pushed through Congress the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which effectively repealed much of the Glass-Steagall Act. The Glass-Steagall Act was enacted as a result of the Great Depression. It separated commercial banks from Wall Street to prevent lending, use of credit, and investing by the same entity. Sort of a checks and balances for Wall Street. That all went to shit when Gramm added a provision to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that kept credit-default swaps exempt from government regulation. These acts of deregulation have crippled America and are major factors in the 2008-2009 banking and economic crisis.

[you] RIFE!

Your deregulation ruined it for everyone. You supplied a springboard for the greediest professions to commit fraud and make stupid mistakes. You took down the world’s economy. You owe America AT LEAST a couple trillion. So break out your checkbook, you ass hat. And, it better be FDIC-insured.

№076 MLA Handbook

For changing the spacing after a sentence.

THE FACTS

MLA stands for Modern Language Association. If you are unfamiliar with it, perhaps you are illiterate. Anyway, the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers is an academic documentation style guide widely used in the United States and Canada. The updated version of the handbook redefines the proper spacing required at the end of a sentence. The rules have changed since the day of the typewriter; we are no longer required to have two spaces after a sentence.

What can I say, old habits die hard. I still struggle with single spacing daily. My hand just wants to hit that long bar twice after a sentence ends. Some people think the extra space is worse than having a front tooth missing from a person’s smile. Apparently, the gap after a period is already accounted for with the “kerning” (which is just a fancy way of saying “spacing”). The extra distance used to make sense when every character took up an equal amount of space. Now all current word processing software automatically adjusts for the extra bit after a period.

[you] RIFE!

To be honest, it was easier for me to quit smoking than to consistently add just one thumb tap after a period.

Mostly, it’s die-hard writers and publishers who want to follow the most current rules that create the dilemma. The MLA Handbook states that either one or two spaces are acceptable. I say, let’s keep it the old way out of respect! And, quite frankly, if you noticed how many spaces I have been using thus far, you are probably not paying attention to what I am writing anyway!

I think the whole thing is a big waste of time. We should never have changed the rule in the first place. Two spaces after a sentence makes the text more readable anyway. So from here on out, I will be double-spacing just because it looks cooler. Boo-ya, MLA! I am going medieval typewriter on your ass. (Just kidding—my editor won’t let me do that.)

№077 Blue star LSD warnings

For being a stupid urban legend.

THE FACTS

A blue star warning is a rumor spread around a community regarding lick-on acid-laced tattoos. The story is that a local drug dealer is on the prowl, handing out LSD to young children. The urban legend got its name because acid was supposedly being distributed invisibly on a small lick-on tattoo in the shape of a blue star. The threat is that a juvenile will lick the tattoo before applying it. This would then result in a psychedelic acid trip, or, worse, death. These worrisome rumors are usually started in the fall during back-to-school time. Then, of course, they die down to make way for poisoned Halloween candy rumors (see RIFE №010).

[you] RIFE!

If we had to blame somebody for this folklore, it would be J. O’Donnell of Danbury Hospital’s Outpatient Chemical Dependency Clinic. This is the name usually associated with the warnings. However, since this is a fake person, we have to blame credulous parents.

As soon as gullible people hear the mention of harm to children, they would prefer self-immolation to allowing a threat like this to harm innocent, unwitting youths. Rest assured, it’s horseshit. There have never been any verified cases of LSD-laced tattoos. There is, though, such a thing as cartoons printed on LSD-soaked blotter paper, which is ingested. However, nobody is giving them out to children for free. Think about it. Selling drugs is a business. It is an illegal business, but a business nonetheless. Why the hell would a drug dealer want to kill his customers before making any money off of them? The tobacco companies would be bankrupt if they followed this business model. A profitable business strategy in drug dealing would be to get customers hooked, and then keep them alive as long as possible to maximize profits. Unfortunately, a drug dealer’s clientele do not need to be tricked or have freebies doled out to them; peer pressure and curiosity are more than enough.

Talk to your children and make them aware of drugs. And as a rule of thumb, take the age you were when you experimented with drugs and divide that by two, and that is the age when your child will do it.

№078 The Food and Drug Administration

For making healthy food unhealthy.

THE FACTS