Uncle Willy's Badly Designed Family Fun Page

Now, today, children, Uncle Willy is going to explain to you about crime. Can anybody tell me what crime is? Oh, now let’s not always see the same hands! Let’s try something different for a change. How about… Jimmy! How do you define crime? Jimmy? No, young man, you are just going to sit here and pay attention! Wait a minute… What are you smoking? Well, I’m sorry, Jimmy, but I just can’t have you hallucinating during my speech! Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to confiscate that. Yes, all of it! And don’t tell your parents!
Anyway, children, crime is the act of doing things that are against The Law. The Law is a set of rules that ordinary people such as you and I cannot cross without being gunned down by police and ripped to pieces by federal dogs. It is here to provide justice via a structured system based on order and the needs of the public that can easily be bypassed with what the Treasury Advisor calls a “suggested minimum donation”.
So, you may ask, how does The Law help me? Well, let’s suppose that you have grown up, which I am assured is possible, but, considering the average IQ of everybody in the room, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Now let’s say somebody broke into your home late at night and stole every single possession you have acquired via the painstaking process of consuming too much complimentary wine at charity auction events, including your paintings, your television, some of your smaller articles of furniture, and your George Foreman appliances with names like the Rockin’ Talkin’ Electric Juice-maker (which now comes in a new version that cuts the fat in half, thereby allowing you to make low-fat rocking talking electric juice). Never fear, children: The Law is on your side!
First of all, you are going to have to walk down to the police station, because this particular thief has also stolen your phone and car. He has also stolen your Aunt Margaret, but you do not feel the need to report this to the officer near the front desk.
He, meanwhile, goes to the back room to find someone who might be able to help you, who in turn tries to weasel out of it by saying that someone else is much more qualified to do a burglary, who in turn tries to weasel of it by saying that he just came in to use the bathroom, and so on, until finally a single inexperienced officer who couldn’t come up with good enough an excuse is forced to emerge from the back room and help you.
He, in turn, sends a patrolling officer who has been dedicated to his job for so long that he is assisted in his travels by two young nurses and an IV to look around your house suspiciously in case you are making everything up and are in fact the sort of deformed sicko who stuffs octogenarians and uses them as bean bags.
Eventually he will admit that, yes, maybe there was a burglary here, inasmuch as the room is as bare as Iowa after a corn harvest. He will then write down what he finds, go back to the station and pass this information along to one of his senior officers, who will use it as a napkin as he eats his lunch. This is about as far as the police can take you in your quest for justice, so it is best from this point to proceed swiftly onto the next step, which is lying about your insurance.
So, children, can anybody tell me what insurance is? No, Jimmy, that’s “insurgence”. That’s what Iraqis do to celebrate special occasions, such as “night”. We’re talking about insurance, which is a policy that your parents have signed that ensures that should any of your property be damaged or stolen, the insurance company will point to a clause that says they never have to pay up for anything beyond the value of a garden gnome. This is a staple of all major insurance companies, which is why financial analysts predict that if you purchased life insurance today and then suffered a heart attack, it would be much more economical to die than to attempt to collect. In fact, insurance companies are actually so proud of this that they list it in the large print; the small print serves no other purpose than to display a Magic Eye picture of a dog.
Next, you fill out an insurance claim, in which you list all the items you would have liked a lot better than that junk you had. The golden rule in this procedure is, of course, never to lie outright. Merely “smudge” the truth, making sure that you list slightly better versions of things you already had. For example, if you had an alarm clock with a SNOOZE function, you could upgrade it to one that forces you to wake up by extending a little metallic arm and clamping your nostrils as you sleep.
What’s that, Jimmy? No, they never will catch the burglars. This is because our justice system is and forever will be about as reliable as Pamela Anderson’s wedding vows. As the old saying goes, chaos will always triumph over order, because chaos is a multicultural underprivileged youth with spray paint and a crowbar. Yes, it’s dangerous; yes, it’s frightening; but no, you can never find a way, within our fair and diverse society, to stop it. Order, in contrast, is Woody Allen in a neck brace.
Wait, children! Please stop crying! We haven’t even gotten to the really depressing parts yet! But there are still lots of good things about our justice system! There has to be at least one!

Um…


THE PROBLEM: Find the derivative of tangent x.
WHAT I AM GOING TO DO ABOUT IT: I’m going to borrow a graphing calculator.

 

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