WARNING: Reading This May Cause Retardation

I have finally figured out a way to get rich quickly by taking advantage of my one God-given talent: clumsiness. As a lazy person I am constantly on the lookout for ways to make loads of money without doing any work, so you can imagine just how excited I got when I read this story.

$15 million? That is just a little ridiculous. I mean, how was she awarded $4.5 million for economic losses? I mean, I know she couldn’t return to work for three years, but she was driving a truck, not mining unobtainium. That’s right, Avatar reference, BOO-YA! (although I’m not certain if that is how you spell boo-yah).

Now what will most likely happen is that Wal-Mart will appeal the decision and the judge will probably reduce her award slightly. After all, Wal-Mart hasn’t been underpaying their employees and neglecting their grease covered walkways to lose money. And speaking of that, what the hell is a “grease interceptor?” Is it some guy running around in the sewer lines with a bucket? By the way, Gary and the Grease Interceptors would be a great name for a band (assuming you know somebody named Gary).

Anyway, what makes me most upset is not that this woman is being awarded all of this money. What pisses me off is that most of that money will be going to (cue ominous music): lawyers, the second lowest life form on planet earth after the Kardashians. I mean, this lady is the one who actually suffered. I imagine spinal injuries can’t be fun, so she deserves some money. Is it her fault that the jury was stupid and gave her way too much money? But the lawyer did nothing except sit there in his fancy office with his fancy law degree hanging on his wall with its fancy Latin writing. Besides, it was the lawyers who probably wrote up the lawsuit and decided how much money they would try to weasel out of the deal. In fact, I can almost guarantee that this lady barely had time to get up from her fall before seventy lawyers were standing over her drooling.

Lawyers have the extraordinary ability to find the stupidest people alive, get them to do something stupid to hurt themselves, and then get these stupid people a stupid amount of money. They say America is the “land of opportunity,” and lawyers have taken that statement to mean “land of potential lawsuits.” Because of this, companies have to put labels on everything detailing even the most basic things. For instance, I was looking at a jar of peanuts the other day when something struck me as odd. For one thing, I don’t eat peanuts, so why do I have a jar of peanuts? Ask my mother, who sent them to me in a care package for some weird reason, as if she thought that jars of peanuts were only available in Hawaii.

Anyway, the weirder thing I noticed was the label, which said INGRIDIENTS: PEANUTS. Right under that, it said the following: WARNING: CONTAINS PEANUTS. Now, most of us with an IQ above that of a tumble weed would already know that there were peanuts in our jar of peanuts. But you just know that somewhere, some idiot allergic to peanuts would pick up a jar of them without that warning and eat them and go into anaphylactic shock. When they ask him in the hospital what he was thinking, he of course will say that he thought his jar of peanuts contained something else, like plums.

And so now our coffee must be labeled hot, our plastic bags labeled choking hazards and Paris Hilton’s vagina labeled a toxic wasteland. And yet, lawyers and idiots find a way around these labels to find ever creative means of making easy money. If a toaster has the instructions “DON’T STICK A FORK IN THIS TOASTER YOU BUMBLING RETARD,” the idiot will of course stick a spoon in there, at which point the lawyer will insist that the company should have included all forms of silverware in their warning.

As you can tell I think that civil suits are the most detestable thing in the world. With that said, I plan on using this trend to get filthy rich. I plan on making these companies hire me to think of warnings. That’s right; you need a truly clumsy idiot to figure out the ways in which clumsy idiots can hurt themselves. For instance, you look at a soda can and think “well, that is a soda can.” I, however, think, “hey, some idiot could possibly take that soda can to the beach, and have his friend throw it to him while he is jumping off of a twenty-foot cliff and cut himself on the forehead.” How did I think this up? Because I was that idiot. So now, thanks to me, nobody can sue Coke because there will be a WARNING DO NOT TOSS THIS CAN TO YOUR IDIOT FRIEND WHILE HE IS JUMPING OFF A CLIFF on the side of the can. Companies will be clamoring over my services.

Or if that doesn’t work I plan on jumping in front of cars and then suing the drivers. So if you are driving today, be on the lookout. Especially if you own a Lexus.

California Says Pass on Grass

It has just been brought to my attention that in addition to deciding which rich white males would be serving in Congress, this past midterm election also covered several other issues. Namely, whether or not people in California should be allowed to get stoned out of their minds whenever they want.

Proposition 19 would have allowed adults over 21 to legally smoke marijuana, but the measure lost 56% to 44%. Political experts say that the bill most likely lost because young voters didn’t show up on election day. Well duh. They were in their basements smoking pot watching election coverage. Now, I wouldn’t know this for certain, but I’m pretty sure all those funky graphics CNN uses during their coverage must look awesome high. Now, frankly I think the bill failed because the good, moral people of California did not want pot to be legal. They would prefer to keep getting stoned illegally. "It's cheaper," is probably what they said.

The main reason behind the bill is that the state of California apparently has built up a massive debt paying for Lindsay Lohan’s rehab stints, so they figured that by taxing marijuana, they could make lots of money. They also figured they could make some money off of tourism when the entire state of Colorado visits.

Unfortunately I think that thinking is flawed. Whatever money they would make in taxing marijuana would be lost when the California state legislature decides to order 2,500 Big Macs during a lunch break. Also, pot smokers are not the type of people that are going to spend a whole lot of money shopping on Rodeo Drive. Also, I’m pretty sure the economy would tank as a result of every worker in California quitting their jobs and becoming full time poet-musicians.

Now, I don’t really care about this particular bill. For one thing, I don’t live in California. But as a current resident of Colorado, I am well versed in the argument over marijuana. Now, I'm not a stoner, but in Colorado that puts me in the minority. Smoking pot in Boulder is one of those things that is technically illegal but the cops don’t really enforce, sort of like polygamy in Utah and incest in Alabama. I mean, every year 10,000 people gather on a field to publicly get high and create a smoke cloud so thick Sarah Palin can see it from her house in Alaska (she gets mad because it obscures her view of Russia). Just today, a Colorado woman was caught crossing the border with enough pot to get the entire republic of China high for the next week.

The thing is, Colorado’s medical marijuana laws make legalizing pot here a moot point. All you have to do is get a prescription for it. Okay, actually you just need to know somebody who has a prescription for it. And it’s not like it’s all that hard to get a prescription. It’s not like the old days where you had to get a really bummer disease, like cancer or glaucoma. Now even the most innocent of ailments will get you a prescription, including (but not limited to): joint pain, back aches, migraines, eating disorders, problems focusing, acne, gout, ingrown toe nails and an irrepressible urge to smoke pot.

There are a lot of people who argue that marijuana should be legal because it is less harmful than alcohol, and yet alcohol is legal. Other people say that crime would be reduced if marijuana was taxed and regulated like alcohol and tobacco. Now, I don’t know if marijuana is safer than alcohol. I guess in a way it is, since drunk people tend to get the urge to go out and do very stupid and often dangerous activities, such as lighting things on fire and flirting with women. Whereas people who are high typically don’t want to do anything more rigorous than ordering Chinese food and putting on their Strange Wilderness DVD (don’t tell me that the makers of that movie didn’t have stoners in mind when they put in this scene).

But health wise, I tend to believe marijuana is worse. I drink alcohol and I’m fine, but I’ve been around stoners and there is definitely something wrong with them. For instance, I’m convinced it creates large holes in the section of the brain that would normally be dedicated to speaking in complete sentences. Also, most people have a part of the brain that typically limits the amount of snowboarding and skiing movies a person can stand. Stoners are missing this part of their brain. They will sit there for hours watching clips of more talented and active stoners going down a hill. After about the fifth clip as far as I can tell they are just replaying the same damn thing over and over again.

So actually, I hope that they do pass this bill in California next election. Maybe then all of the stoners here will move there, and I can finally take out this darn skiing DVD.

Sibling Rivalry

One of the hardest parts of going to college out of state is that I don’t get to see my family often. Ha ha I’m just joking, it’s actually one of the perks. And don’t get all mad at me for saying that; they would tell you the same thing about me. Because family members do crazy s**t like this to each other.

Now I don’t know too many sisters who are around the same age, and for some weird reason all the ones I do know are twins (don’t ask me why that is). So I obviously have no experience with this type of situation. This of course, will not stop me from jumping to unreasonable conclusions. Sisters do not get along as well as brothers mainly because they are women. Men have the advantage of being able to settle arguments by trying to beat the snot out of each other and then be completely fine in the next five minutes. Girls can’t do that though, so they have to resort to childish games and pouts that often last long after either can remember what they are mad at each other for.

This story is a perfect example of this. From all accounts, these two ladies used to be pretty close until they got in a fight over a few hundred dollars, which women blow on shoes they never wear. Then of course there is the matter of the $500,000 in lottery winnings. I find it pretty funny that the sister who is trying to get the money is like “I love my sister,” while the other one is probably thinking “F**k my sister, I’m rich beeyatch.”

Now what really confuses me is why these geriatric geezers are fighting over this money. They’re both over 80 years old. They’re going to die in a few years; how much more money could they need? And what would they spend it on? Metamucil? Tickets to see The Price is Right? Snuggies? If by some miracle I ever reach the age of 80, the only thing I’m going to be buying are diapers and flyswatters (and please don’t make me explain why I need those two items together). I mean, yeah maybe you could say that they want the money for their children or to cover their funeral expenses or whatever. I always thought this was stupid; I’m dead. I don’t need a goddamn gold-plated coffin. I will put it in my will that my family should just dump my body into the ocean or a dumpster or something cheap. Not that I will need to tell them this; in fact, they will probably do this before I’m even dead.

This story is also just another reason why gambling is stupid. I come from Hawaii, where gambling is illegal and we do not have a lottery. This could explain why people in Hawaii always want to gamble. A few years ago, a bunch of us went to visit a friend in Cheney, Washington for spring break. Now before you ask why in the world we would go to a place like Cheney for spring break, you’re missing the point (also, I still don’t know myself). On the trip, my friend Chris was so intrigued by the little scratch games that he spent about $50 in about four days on a bunch of scratch cards. Of course, this could also be because there is absolutely nothing to do in Cheney. In the end, he ended up winning like two bucks.

Anyway, my point is that you never win in gambling. You never hear good stories about lottery and jackpot winners. The only stories you hear are the ones where five years later the winner is divorced, addicted to drugs, homeless and has cancer. You ever notice that every fifth episode of CSI involves people who are dead because they won like $1000 on the slots? Of course, with all that said, there are the ones who win and then get to marry ridiculously hot gold-diggers, like this guy.

So it’s sad that instead of living the rest of their days out in peace watching reruns of Golden Girls together (I like that show by the way), these ladies will most likely spend the rest of their days in court, wasting their winnings on lawyers and splitting their family in half. And I hate it when stories end with lawyers making money.

Now I have a younger sister who for all accounts is a normal, sensible person. Sure she has a tendency to burp in public and is about as coordinated as a cross-eyed fish, but when you were raised around a brother like me that’s probably bound to happen. The important thing is that if she were to ever win a ridiculous amount of money, I’m sure she would split it with me. Or at least she better. I mean I drove her around all the time in high school. She owes me gas money.