Okay, so its very simplistic. But I, for one, could never really understand what made one religion more right than another. Christians and Muslims both believe that they are right, and I can’t really figure out a reason to pick one over the other. Maybe if we all had the option to examine and choose a religion, we’d all realize that we’re the same underneath.

Sometimes, when I’m bored, I’ll turn on the TV. I try and not do this during the hours of about 1 to 4 pm, however, because it is very difficult to find anything worthwhile to watch. I am pretty much forced to watch either daytime talk shows or idiotic children’s shows. Not even good cartoons like the ones I watched as a kid, but these lame syrupy/epileptic shows they have now that are mere setups for selling expensive action figures. But I digress….that could be a whole other rant.

I find the daytime talk shows to be infuriatingly stupid. Full of very stupid people in very stupid situations with very stupid problems. One time, I was in St. Louis for an ACerS convention and someone turned on the hotel television and started watching the Jenny Jones show. The inflammatory topic of that day’s show was something about “My kid is growing up too fast!” and essentially featured mothers saying that their daughter dated older boys and in general acted in ways that a 14-16 year old should not act. Then the girls themselves came out, predominantly dressed in revealing clothing of some sort or another, trying to be sexy. They all talked about how sexy they were, and how they could get boys to give them stuff because they were so hot. In case you were wondering what kind of cars and jewelry they got in return for their stimulating company, one girl (age 14) said that “she even got weed!” and another girl (16, I believe) got “Taco Bell and McDonalds”. Before they actually came out onto the stage, little intro videos were shown of each girl where she said her name and her exploits. In a real touch of class, the producers filmed this intro video with the girl twirling herself around a stripper’s pole.

So the girls came out and stated their case, and then Jenny took it to the audience, who had their own things to say. One particular member of the audience chastised the girls for wearing such slutty clothes, to which the girls on stage responded with “You just jealous because you ain’t got this.”(trust me, she had nothing that one would want) And then it hit me : the problem here is simply that these girls think too much of themselves.

Because of this revelation, I propose a new weapon be built for the arsenal of the National Guard : The De-Egoizer. Upon being struck with this weapon, the victim would feel a sudden loss of confidence in themselves and quickly begin to question the importance of their own comments. Thus, rather than tell us what they were thinking, they would instead think “They probably don’t want to hear what I want to say” and shut up. Rather than dress up in revealing clothing when they do not have the appropriate body type for such dress, they would dress more modestly. And most of all, they would not go on stupid daytime talk shows. Now don’t get me wrong : The De-Egoizer would not be used exclusively on women. I just centered on them because of that lone experience with the Jenny Jones show. There are plenty of men around who think too much of themselves; they were probably on Jerry Springer that day.

A ray gun sounds a little too naively futuristic (even for me), but I bet the same results could be done with a dart of some sort. Some hallucinogenic drugs make one feel invincible; there’s bound to be some drugs that make one feel like nothing. Such drugs could be effectively used to treat egoism in idiots. Such treatments could have unexpected positive effects on the rest of society. For instance, since these people will have shut up, we will hear more from new people, who perhaps put more thought into their words. Also, since people with superiority complexes often put others down, we won’t have as many people with unreasonably low self-esteems. And best of all, we will devastate the daytime talk show market, perhaps to the point where they will have no guests and get canceled. A giant black hole in daytime television! Well, if push comes to shove, we could bring back some of my childhood cartoons…

As we all know, I have come up with some kooky ideas in the past. Some have been lame, and some have not. Some people have even gone so far as to say that my schemes are stupid. Well, I will be vindicated with this current plan, which is vast in its scope and its goodliness. I will no longer be denounced as a child of the devil, and people may perhaps throw softer fruits at me, rather than the super-dense fruitcakes I have been bombarded with in the past.

Like most of my ideas, this starts with something I hate. In this case, it is sappy, shallow pop bands. Such as The Backstreet Boys, as well as their pseudo-variants, N Sync and 98°. I really don’t have a problem with the female equivalent, Britney Spears, because she is hot. But anyways, the Backstreet Boys infuriate me, not only because of the puzzling phenomenom of their screaming hordes of female fans, but because the meaning of their songs escape me. I often find myself screaming at the TV, which in of itself is not all that unusual. They touch a special cord in me, however, because I really like lyrics. They often do more for me than the music does, and show a more complex side of the band than just banging riffs. However, as Exhibit A, I present I Want It That Way, a Backstreet Boys song that gets me really riled up. WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN!?!?!?!? It makes no sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor….

Here is where my roommate Cameron comes in. He has a theory that has merit, I believe. He thinks that there are a handful of computers spread throughout the world, buried deep within the bowels of the earth, that create the lyrics for these crappy songs. The managers for the groups put in a few key words, and the computer will write an entire song, choruses (chori?) and all. All the boys have to do is work out a dance routine – wait, I mean pay their choreographers to make up a dance routine for them. The key point is that the song-writing ability does not lie within the heatthrobbing group, but within the ones and zeros residing in some computer somewhere.

With Cameron’s help, we can turn this to our own advantage. He is often very bored, so hopefully we can channel this bored energy into doing some hard-core coding. With a lot of elbow grease, and a little bit of luck, we can create our own program which will create blockbuster songs and will set teenage hearts everywhere aflutter. With a little work and some outside consulting, we could maybe even create programs which will work in other languages. I’ve seen examples of these pop groups in Hong Kong and Korea, and it seems that there is a definite demand for singers who can write cheesy love songs and dance while performing them with those headphones on. As for the person who will actually be doing the singing…..I’m not sure who will volunteer. I would do it, but I’m really not good-looking, something which is a prerequisite for breaking onto the scene. But we will assume that I will undergo extensive plastic surgery and facial reconstruction, and come out looking as cute as a button. With the help of Cameron’s program, and using the Internet to publicize and distribute my songs – thus negating the need to sell my soul to a record label – I will instantly become an international star, going multiple platinum with my debut record, selling out massive stadiums, and building a fan base that greatly outstrips all of the world’s standing armies combined.With this fame comes fortune, which is really the whole point of this undertaking. Some of you may be appalled that I would be doing this for something so crass and materialistic as money, but I’m afraid that influence does not grow on trees nowadays, and money is needed to bring other aspects of “The Plan” to fruition.

The crowning achievement will come after maybe my third album, when I have made millions of dollars and am doing stadium tours to maybe a hundred thousand screaming fans. The day will come when I will emerge from backstage and peer onto the screaming multitudes with a mixture of pity and malice, come up to the microphone, and expose myself for the fraud that I am. I will whip out a laptop computer and show the people who they have been worshipping the past few years, thank them for giving me hundreds of their hard-earned dollars, and then just leave the stage, letting the computer put on the rest of the show. Of course, I will have to disappear from society for a few years, but that’s okay, because the next step of the plan will require a lot of work.

In all probability, very few people are aware of where most of the grain that the US produces goes. Many would think that we export it to hungry nations, or make it into baked goods. Actually, the majority of it – 75-85% – goes toward feeding livestock. (You know, I really don’t have proof of this, but I have heard it many a time. If someone can give me references which either refute or support this statement, I would be glad to see it) It has been stated that as a general rule, as one moves up one level in the food chain, only 10% of the energy gets passed on. I don’t know if the magnitude given is correct, but what its basically saying is true: plant-eaters get more energy out of plants than carnivores get out of herbivores. Its an inescapable result of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, which is to say that energy as a whole is conserved and that if there are irreversible processes taking place within an organism (which there certainly are) than the animal is not being perfectly efficient. Simply put, we are wasting a hell of a lot of energy by eating as much meat as we do, as opposed to eating more plant matter. As far as farmlands go, more food can be grown by raising crops on a plot of land than by raising animals. Meaning that it takes far less land to grow enough vegetables/plant matter to feed a family of five than it would if one wanted to feed them with meat. Also, if one is careful, there is no reason why malnutrition of any sort should occur. So, we would think that if we totally converted to a vegetarian lifestyle, we would be able to support the growing population. If we could just succeed in distributing the food, we could put a serious dent in world hunger. There is just one problem.

Meat tastes good. I find that inescapable. In America, there is the added bonus that it’s convenient. It’s hard to go into a fast food place and get something vegetarian that tastes good; you’re pretty much down to french fries and apple pie. A lot of people share my sentiments. There are a lot of meat and potatoes men out there. So the next step of the plan is to create a true meat substitute. None of this quasi-beef soy crap, but something that really does taste like meat. It’s a tall order, but few things are unsurmountable if you can throw a lot of money at it. So using the profits gained from being a heartthrob, I will fund massive amounts of secret research in order to perfect the perfect meat substitute. I will create JeetBeef and JeetPork and JeetChicken, etc., although probably with a catchier name. I will create substitute blood, to satisfy the primal cravings of those who like to eat their meat raw. After years of research and enough money, I’m sure it can be done. And it must be done in absolute secrecy. Because, you see, I do not intend to tell anyone that I will be feeding them JeetMeat. I will do it slyly, not telling anyone, paying key people to be silent, and silencing them myself if necessary. In the space of a five years, perhaps, meat will be completely phased out, and few people will be the wiser. After that, I will unveil the JeetMeat line of products, to the chagrin of all the non-vegetarians out there. They will scream “We will never give up our meat! Go to Hell!” and I will say “You’ve been eating it for the past five years!” Their spirits broken, they will numbly do as I say. Either that, or they will mob me in a crazed frenzy and rip me to shreds on national television. Well, I hope its the former.

Some may notice another problem that is now arising. I’m sure there are a vast number of workers who depend on the meat industry in order to maintain their livelihood. There are cattle ranchers, truck drivers, railways, butcheries, meat packing plants, safety inspectors, et cetera. They will be all out of jobs, and I doubt that farming is so labor intensive that it could absorb all those workers. I have just created a lot of unemployment! But fear not, I have a vision for these people also. And it involves Microsoft.

Did you know that the United States Armed Forces is currently is the process of switching their systems to Windows NT? The reason they state is that the off-the-shelfness cuts down on costs, and since many people come into the army familiar with the Windows environment, the learning curve is greatly shortened. I don’t know what system they use now, but I can only assume its some sort of Unix variant, since Unix is so widely used for large systems and it’s so old. Unix is very stable, but its also somewhat of a mystery to the uninformed. Once it is mastered, though, it is very powerful. My concern is that even when the military closes up the security gaps and such in the software, it will still be a timebomb waiting to happen. I foresee a future when a Navy vessel enters combat, and just when a missle is tracking the ship and the defenses need to be at their highest….the system crashes. All hands lost. Also, since this further cements Bill Gates’ grasp on this world by connecting him with the finest military in the world, I think its just dangerous. There’s no telling what a crazy man like him might do. We’ll need a crazy man like me to stop him. All those cattle ranchers, meat-packers, etc., will now be trained to be computer programmers. And with my rising influence in the government, I will persuade the armed forces to turn to Linux as the OS of choice. My army of programmers will create a robust working environment for the military to use, and also a nice GUI so we can U.S. soldiers to work quickly. There will be no fear of a systems crash at a critical moment, and less money will go into Bill Gates’ bank account. Also, since Linux is free, and my programmers will be paid out of my own pocket, the government will be saved millions of dollars at least, probably billions of dollars when you consider how much downtime there will be to fix Microsoft-induced bugs and for the upgrades that Microsoft will demand (“Well, to launch the missiles you can use MS MissleLauncher for NT 3.0, but if you want them to actually hit something, I’m afraid you’ll have to upgrade to MissleLauncher 4.5″).

So, what has my idea done? It has stopped world hunger and kept the world safe for democracy. All at the cost of major lifestyle changes for a small percentage of the population and the destroyed psyches of young impressionable women. What more could one want? I will no doubt be elevated to the position of Demi-God and rule over the world. With my iron fist and aluminum ankle, I will set things right and a Golden Age will dawn on humankind. So watch out for my new single and place close attention to what you’re eating.

I hate meeting new people. It’s a royal pain in the ass. If I had it my way, I would never have to meet new people, only dealing with the people I already know. The astute reader is probably wondering if I realize that at some point I had to meet my current friends. Well I am aware of that, thank you very much, and I must inform you that it was indeed a painful and laborious process. To make a person a good friend you have to invest soooooo much time into them. Time that person with a busy lifestyle or a heavy workload simply cannot afford. You need to get to know each others likes and dislikes, hobbies, background, opinions, those stupid little stories that everyone tells each other, etc. And after all that, there’s a chance that you might not even like them! Then it’s just all been a waste of your time. Well, I have a solution to this dilemma, obviously, or else I wouldn’t be writing this.

It’s actually blindingly simple. The answer is the personal introductory video. The only things you need are a videocamera and the equipment needed to copy a lot of tapes. In this video, you describe yourself, your opinions, maybe even let it follow you around for a while so that the prospective friend can see how you live. If you find talking to the camera disconcerting, you can just take the camera along the next time you make a friend in the “conventional” manner. Then, you’ll only have to do it once. The point is, this third party can view the tape at their leisure, perhaps late at night when they can’t sleep, sitting in just their underwear on some old ratty couch in their living room. In other words, at a time when it would be inconvenient or uncomfortable for you to be there in person. Not understand something I said? Just push the rewind button. No need for you to annoy me with your “What?”‘s and “Pardon?”‘s and your “If you don’t back off from me I’ll file a restraining order”‘s and your “Sorry, when I said ‘Hi’ to you I was just being polite”‘s. And if you have to go somewhere but I’m in the middle of a charming anecdote, you don’t need to wait till an opportune moment to interrupt and ditch me, you can just press pause. If you decide that you wish to become friends with me, you can just then call me up and see what I thought of your video tape. And then we can have a nice 30-day trial friendship, with no obligations and a full money-back guarantee. Best of all, I think, is that I only need to say all of that once. Really, I think that’s the most tedious part: repeating your own “Song of Myself” every single time you meet a fellow traveler on the gigantic wearying journey called life. Right now, to alleviate the boredom, I make up new stuff everytime I meet someone new, but really, that can’t hold up for long, and I don’t think it makes the police very happy.

So I encourage all of you to pick up your camcorders and give it a try. Make your directorial debut a good one.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
–George Santayana

“Whoever controls the past, controls the future. Whoever controls the present, controls the past.”
–George Orwell

Perhaps the first quote above is true. But certainly, it seems, the converse isn’t true. If I go to the local bookstore and go to the history aisle, I see shelf upon shelf of books to buy or browse. There’s probably even a separate shelf purely for Military History. Clearly, there are a lot of people who haven’t forgotten about history. And yet the last time I checked, people were making the same mistakes all over again. In many cases, I think that History is the problem in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong; I think History is fascinating, and if I didn’t happen to love number-crunching engineering classes and calculating the free energy of Henrian solutions as much as I do, I think I might even be taking some history courses. History is in part great because sometimes it’s just like a big fairy tale. The good guys usually win, in part because they usually write the history. Sometimes, in fact, I wonder if history is just too good to be true…

But back to the point. I’m sure you’ve no doubt heard of the all the ethnic violence in what used to be Yugoslavia. The violence goes a little bit deeper than religious differences, though. This region has long been a hotbed of tension. You see, many hundreds of years ago, Christians went out and killed a lot of the Muslim poplulation. This, in turn, did not engender lots of warm feelings toward the Christians on the part of the Muslims. So now we just have a very uncomfortable situation, with a lot of ethnic violence. I would say that the same would go for Israel and the Arab states, or mainland Asia and Japan. It seems that not only are we repeating ourselves, but we’re dwelling on it in what could only be described as an unhealthy manner.

All I propose is that we do away with history. We just chuck our history books out of the window. That way, no one can remember who wronged who and when and in what evil manner. They won’t remember that many years ago they were taken from their homeland country and enslaved for many years. They won’t remember that years ago, people got stupid and did things that really don’t affect anything now. I liken this to wiping the slate clean, in a matter of speaking. For once in our petty exisences, we can get rid of our inbred prejudices.

Of course, like all my other great ideas, this one will need a little refining. For instance, I fear we’ll have to throw away all the old newspapers and magazines. This will put quite a damper on scientific research, though, since three-fourths of every research paper just restates what five other scientific papers have written. Maybe we should just keeps journals as long as they contain no social commentary or appreciable news. There will also be plenty of people that will go on and on about cultural identity and traditions and so forth. I say that if a tradition isn’t good enough to keep going from generation to generation by plain word of mouth, then it really isn’t making the grade. Who knows? Maybe, in a stroke of blind luck, the lack of cultural identify will galvanize the human population to start something together.

The biggest problem I see is the massive amounts of writers, historians, editors, and storytellers that will enter the unemployment market. This alone will probably undo all the damage control we’ve gone through in the past year. Well, if push comes to shove, and all the damn conservatives refuse to listen to my words of wisdom, radical as they may be, I suppose I could alter the master plan. All the Newsweek article writers and historians will be put to work on the greatest literary program of all time: “The New Authoritative Jeetian History of the World.” In these hallowed annals (well, someday they’ll be hallowed) will be contained all the history of the known world. Those of the current generation might read some of the chapters and claim that things aren’t as they remember them, but these few “forgetful” people will either come to their senses or mysteriously disappear. Trust me, it’ll be glorious. Full of the accounts of the Crusades, where thousands of Christian soldiers paraded to the Holy Land to help the Turks rebuild their cities after a devastating storm. How Pope Pius VI proclaimed in a papal bull that Protestantism, as well as Islam, Judeaism and Hinduism, really all mean the same thing and should be treated as the same by all of man.

I’ve talked to a few people. No, really. I’m not kidding this time. And a few of those people are not imaginary. And a few of those few people are my age. Being the seriousness minded people that we are, sometimes we talk about our futures and what will become of us as we enter our twenties and thirties. And some of us want kids. This is almost beyond me, I must admit. I never saw the joy and excitement in waiting hand and foot on something that will do nothing but give you grief a few years down the road, but maybe it’s something to do with getting attached to something you’ve had for awhile. I know, I just lost my TI-82 of 4 years, and it physically and emotionally traumatized me. For these reasons, and more, I think that parenting would suck.

I’m not alone. My friends, who aren’t as extreme as me perhaps, agree that there is a certain age where kids become decidedly not fun. So I realized that someone needs to shake things up. Unfortunately, that person won’t be me. I don’t have the charisma and initiative to push this one through. But someone else can freely take these ideas and follow them all the way home, and all I’ll ask for is permission to gloat freely in public.

First thing is that nasty baby backlash. Even I’ll admit that babies are cute. And great fun. That peek-a-boo thing could keep me entertained for hours, weeks maybe if I had an IV put in me or something. You may find it hard to believe, but even I was cute at some point, although long ago in prehistory, perhaps when I was a zygote. Today, you’d agree with me that I am decidedly not cute. Well, according to some theorem that some math guy thought of long ago, if I was cute once and am not cute now, there was some point at which I stopped being cute. I would identify this as a point where the parenting experience started to depreciate rapidly. I think we need to take a cue from the highly successful automobile industry. We need to introduce baby leasing.

With car leasing, you get to drive a new car every three years, and avoid that massive depreciation and the problems that come with a really old car, and the only drawback is that you never own the car and therefore do not have that asset, although that is reflected in the price. Well, with baby leasing, not owning the baby is a plus anyway, because the only thing you’re missing out on is supporting their “cool” lifestyle and probably a massive college bill! This is truely a win situation for the parents. The only problem I see is after the first few years, there will be a massive used baby market emerging, as the first round of trade-ins go to work. But I’m counting on moderate retention (I know some people are going to get attached to their kids) to keep the numbers down. Any leftover babies can be sold at a greatly reduced price, encouraging families who can’t afford a new baby but really want one.

The next step isn’t as ready to order as baby leasing. In fact, this will take a buttload of work. But in the coming decades, I’m sure we can develop the necessary technology to see this work. We already know that geneticists are always hard at work, tinkering with our genes and splitting and splicing and messing with other species’ genes to do what they want. It’s only a matter of time before they start messing with people themselves. We all know that they’re just messing with animals for practice anyway. Well, it’s my opinion that kids suck because they’re so irrational. Being the wonderful, understanding, rational person I am, I can’t deal with them. I think the worst time to parent must be when the child has the physical capacity to do what you don’t want them to, but doesn’t have the ability to understand why you don’t want them to do what they want to do. It’d be great if we could just skip that phase altogether.

But of course I wouldn’t mention this if I didn’t have an idea. I think we should get all our geneticists together and change the very DNA of humans. This way, we could create humans that pupate. And then, when they’re old enough to behave, they emerge from their cocoons/chrysili and they’re ready to rock. There are some drawbacks, but I’m sure after a hundred years we’ll work them out. First of all, they won’t get all that wonderful stimulation and teaching while pupating. If you’ve read Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World” you’ll see that it’s possible, at least in imagination, to teach people things while they’re developing. Secondly, you might say that unless they pupate until they’re 20, you’re gonna get a nasty youth when they come out. Well, I’m a well-behaved unsurly teenager, so there’s no reason these kids can’t be. But my biggest problem is that since they go into cocoons, we’ll have to identify them as larvae before then, and that’s just not cool. Plus, you know there’s gonna be some kids who come out looking like beautiful butterflies, and that’s pretty and all, but it’s not what we’re going for.

In conclusion, those are my two ideas for the future of the human race. I’m sure after careful consideration, you too will agree with me, and someday we can put all this in action.

Have you ever wondered why the year ends when it does? I mean, here we are, just tooling along, and WHA-BAM! We have to change all of our calendars and spend a few weeks writing new checks because we write the old year on them. The year, as it is, ends for no reason. And I have a solution to this ages-old problem.
No longer do we have to live under the tyrannical rule of convention! Nay, we can thrust off the yoke of the years past and forge a new future. And all it would take is to move the year ahead by 10 days. You see, December 21 is the day of the winter solstice, a truly meaningful time in that it marks the shortest day for those of us in the northern hemisphere that still have days, and the longest day for you poor chaps in the southern hemisphere who still have nights.

You might ask why we should go to the trouble of changing everything, seemingly on the whim of a short Indian guy. But I assure you, this idea is not only to my advantage, as my ego will surely be boosted if everyone adopts my idea, but also to the whole world.

First the advantages that are more felt than seen. What do most people do when the new year starts? If you’re like many people, you start thinking of New Year’s Resolutions that you can attempt to follow through with. Why do people do this? When New Year’s Day comes around, and you get to toss out the old calendar, you feel as if the slate has been wiped clean and you are starting anew. Is this in fact the case? Hell no. Time is continuous; other cultures start the New Year at a time when the Earth is at a different point in its orbit. But psychologically, we are starting anew. Changing the end of the year to the solstice merely furthers that feeling. Now people can say “The days will only get longer from here!” or if you’re some sort of southern hemispheran, you can say “The last day of the year is the longest day!” Doesn’t that bring a greater, snugger sense of closure?

Secondly, there is a more fiscally admirable reason to change. By ending the year on a solstice, we accomplish one more thing: we place the other solstice at the mid-year point. And this leaves an opportunity that retailers crave. They get another holiday in the middle of the summer, which is a relative desert of festiveness comapred to the end of the year and all its religion-based gift-giving. The economy is suitably boosted. Hallmark has a reason to sell cards other than for birthdays. Mid-Year parties will abound, and the whole party industry will be enrichened. After all, next to the hard-working farmer, the trusty balloon-maker is the backbone of America. Imagine thousands of people thronging Times Square in New York even though it’s 95 degrees out, cheering to bring in the second half of the year. And if there’s anything people want, it’s more holdidays.

Imagine the future. Far, far future, when finally beings from another solar system visit Earth and find it inhabited with a civilization that has altered its planet enough to qualify it as an advanced civilization. Imagine them looking at our stupid wars, our racism, our unequal wealth distribution, and the proliferation of tv infomercials. They are about to turn back, opting to wait another hundred years and hope we’ve risen above our petty differences. But then one of them notices our calendar. With rising excitement, he tells his colleagues about his discovery. It appears that we set our calendar around the eccentricities of our orbit and seasons. What a rational decision! They decide that we must be worth something after all and come down to further investigate. Of course, everyone will panic and riot, and destroy the aliens and probably Earth, greatly relieving the Doomsdayers. But just think, we would have gained the respect of an advanced civilization!

So, call your local representative or legislator today, and tell them that you won’t vote for them in the next election unless they stand behind this. If they won’t listen, support your local crime syndicate and/or paramilitary group today, so they can use their superior “lobbying” powers. Just tell them Jeet sent you.