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.