The moderately official web site for Michael Kirchhoff
Think Tank
Employee Compensation: You’re Doing It Wrong
12 years ago
Once a year, I evaluate the performance of my employees. We discuss their accomplishments and failures. We set goals for the upcoming year. And, like most companies, compensation adjustments are finalized.
What boggles my mind, however, is how other corporations handle salary adjustments. Most companies have a backwards, almost pre-Enlightenment attitude towards how they pay their employees. A system where workers make more money the longer they work for a company is an illogical and dangerously inefficient system. I cannot believe that people earn degrees in Human Resources in the 21st century and still adhere to this antiquated idea.
Then again, the Potato Solution is a think tank, and most companies are not. Most companies do not have access to the research data that we have at our disposal, because we crunched the numbers ourselves. So, allow me to explain how we handle employee compensation here at TPS, and consider adopting our rational, forward-thinking system to your company.
When I make a job offer to a prospective employee, the salary figure is chosen based on the position they will be taking, with education and previous experience factored into the formula. Our beginning salaries are extremely generous, and are a full 10 to 30 percent higher than equivalent entry-level positions at other think tanks. We also make it known to the new hire that their initial salary is the most they will ever make during their employment at the Potato Solution. That is because, each year during evaluations, our employee salaries are decreased, never increased. Noteworthy goals are taken into account when deciding on compensatory adjustments, but wages are always scaled downwards.
The logic is actually fairly straightforward and applies to any company. An employee’s enthusiasm, attentiveness, and productivity is at their highest on the very first day they start their job. Not yet comfortable enough to expose the withered blackness of their soul, repeatedly blighted by disappointment in life’s unending gauntlet of misery, a worker in their first week at a new job is bright, friendly, eager to learn. And wears freshly-laundered clothes. That is when the employee is truly earning their salary, and that’s when I, as a boss, am willing to compensate them appropriately for their ardor.
However, once the worker becomes comfortable in their position, they see more opportunities to ease back on the throttle. Lunch breaks get longer. Walls get stared at. YouTube videos begin to stream. The longer an employee works at a company, the less work they actually do. The following chart is based on a multi-year study we conducted right here at TPS:
As the graph indicates, the number of years an employee works at a company is directly related to the amount of time they spend on pointless bullshit. Yes, those photos of cats are indeed juxtaposed with humorous captions that comment in a satirical fashion relating to the foibles of their human caretakers, but how exactly is this activity helping me as an employer? And why should I be paying employees more money every year for their growing indifference, bitterness, and inadequacy?
I call it the Gravity Compensation System. You learned it on Sesame Street: what goes up must come down. Just as gravity pulls weight towards the center of the earth, so should employee salaries gradually be hauled to the ground. No matter how high you fly, eventually you are going to run out of fuel. You can choose to land that plane yourself, or you can just wait and the plane will land itself, though the latter option will not be pretty, and will likely involve fire and scattered body parts.
When I present the Gravity Compensation System to other companies, their initial reaction is that it will shatter employee morale. In reality, just the opposite is true. Human beings define themselves by their guilt. Workers who are slacking off know they are doing something wrong, and judge themselves harshly. In fact, you are probably reading this blog right now to avoid doing something that someone else is paying you to do. By lowering salaries over time, employees feel less guilty about their deteriorating productivity, feel more like they are getting the compensation they deserve, and generally feel more content with their own behavior and their relationship to their employer. They are expected to be progressively more useless over time, and humans are at their most satisfied when they feel they are fulfilling their potential.
Benjamin Franklin said, “Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” The Gravity Compensation System is the essence of Franklin’s idea: don’t reward people for squandering. Employees who embrace their squandering and the associated deteriorating salary are happy, and those that reject that idea will find a job elsewhere. Everybody wins.
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In a future time, children will work together to build a giant cyborg
02 years ago
The remote meeting is becoming ubiquitous in today’s increasingly “connected” business climate. Meetings used to require physical bodies to be located in the same room, but advances in teleconferencing, web cameras, and online meeting tools now make it easier than ever for people who are located in different parts of the world to gather in one virtual place to ask each other questions, such as “Can you see me on the screen?” and “Why can’t I connect to the network?” and “What number do I dial?” and “We can barely hear you, Ed, are you on speakerphone?” and “Should I call the IT guy?”
“Telepresence” is a family of technologies that allow people to have a physical presence in a remote meeting environment. The concept is still fairly new, even to the extent that using the made-up word “telepresence” isn’t annoying (yet). One California company called Anybots will soon be launching a new product they call the QB, which is designed to make teleconferencing mobile, tactile, and much, much creepier.
QB is an Ikea floor lamp on wheels with a webcam embedded in its skull. The idea is that a telecommuter could take control of QB’s consciousness at any time and be able to interact in the “real” office by controlling QB’s movements with their remote computer. They would be able to steer the lamp anywhere in the office (as long as “anywhere” doesn’t require access by going up and down stairs, pushing elevator buttons, or opening closed doors).
Anybots put together this little video to demonstrate their product:
Like any new product, the QB may be a wee bit price prohibitive at this time. (Cost for the QB: $15,000. Cost for an Ikea BÖJA floor lamp with a webcam duck-taped to the side: $89.) However, I can see practical applications for the product that Anybots hasn’t thought of yet. For example, as a blogger, I could see a great use for having my readers equipped with QBs. They don’t have to be stuck at their computer waiting for posts; the QB can follow them around wherever they go, and when one of my articles is published, at any time of the day or night, each of my readers will have their personal QB download the article content off the 3G network and then speak it to them aloud. They could even choose from a variety of voices to emerge from the QB: Morgan Freeman, Dame Judi Dench, Hank Azaria, or even mine (a soft baritone with the barest hint of Eastern European lilt…it’s lovely, really).
I also think the QB presents a savvy opportunity (though I probably shouldn’t be giving great ideas like this away for free) for Google. Imagine: a Google-ready QB that watches everything you do and makes contextual marketing suggestions based on your current activity. For example:
- You are going to visit your grandmother. The Google QB rolls up behind you and says, “Do you enjoy grandmothers? Walter’s Original hard candies have been the choice of old people who lost their sense of taste decades ago, and it should be yours, too! Why not bring your granny some almost-delicious Walter’s Butternougat Nuggets? Also, choosing a nursing home has never been easier! Be sure to visit WaitingForDeathsSweetRelease.org for our sponsored links!”
- You are in a bookstore. The Google QB lurches up and down the aisles with you, whispering in an unending stream of suggestions. “Buy that book. That one too. No, not that one, it’s not from a sponsored publisher, put it back on the shelf. Don’t forget to get a gift card, or your family will suspect you don’t love them. Oooo, get that magazine! And the bookmark with kittens on it!”
- You are having sex. The Google QB hovers nearby, sputtering advice: “Interested in procreation? Your first stop needs to be CuteBabyNames.biz! Need a reliable and discreet facility for STD testing? Remember, life is short, have an affair at Ashley Madison!”
SPUD Factor: MINISCULE
POSTSCRIPT: The title for this post was taken from a They Might Be Giants song, “Robot Parade”.
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Motivational Tweaker
02 years ago
The Fourth of July holiday has come and gone, and America celebrated. Most folks, including those who work for me, took Monday off and returned to the office today with varying degrees of reluctance.
The question vexing employers on a day like this is how to motivate employees back into productivity? How do you get your money’s worth out of a workforce that is pissy, hung over, and apathetic on a good day, let alone the morning after a three or four day weekend?
I recommend positive encouragement. Sure, I could tell a guy that coming to work today means he finally gets to temporarily extricate himself from the endless emotional vampirism of his omnivorous, disappointing family. But even if that’s true, it’s not likely to inspire him into proficiency. On the other hand, empty affirmations aren’t going to work either, at least for people who are already predisposed to negativity. You have to find the balance.
Nobody likes being forced to work after a period of enjoyable relaxation, even myself. Even though the work we do here at the Potato Solution will fix every problem that has ever or will ever exist, sometimes the temptation becomes overwhelming to just stay home and play World of Warcraft for 13 hours. After all, earning 5000 gold so my tauren druid can finally get his epic flight form IS solving a problem, in a way, isn’t it?
No, true motivation must be generated from true inspiration. That’s one of the lessons we take from celebrating Independence Day in the first place. If post-holiday laziness and apathy were widespread in 1776, there’s a very good chance there would have been no holiday at all yesterday: we would still be singing “God Save The Queen”, the Tea Party movement would likely consist of actual tea drinkers, and not only would we be forced to care about soccer, we’d have to call it “football”. Just think of it, without the Revolutionary War, there would be no America, therefore no American football, and consider all the ancillary industries that would then be destroyed: t-shirt vendors, beer brewers, steroid manufacturers, underground dog fighting trainers. All gone, all because the Founding Fathers didn’t “feel like” working.
Motivated yet? I thought so.
SPUD Factor: MILD
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Kick my balls? No thanks, I prefer them covered in fuzzy green felt
12 years ago
As we approach the Fourth of July weekend (for my international readers, July 4th is a holiday in the United States where we recognize the historical significance of Randy Quaid’s suicide attack against the alien mothership), two major events in the world of “sport” are happening concurrently: Wimbledon and the World Cup.
Both of these events involve athletes at the pinnacle of their prowess, utilizing a lifetime of intensive training and personal sacrifice against the most fierce competitors they will ever match against. Both Wimbledon and the World Cup are beloved by their respective fans and talked about endlessly by the yammering hairdos of sports babble shows, whose analysis can typically be summarized as “she hit ball good” and “he kick ball hard”.
What you come here for, readers, is true analysis. So here it is:
Four Reasons Why Tennis Is Better Than Stupid, Boring Soccer.
1. No Ties. A tennis match will not end in a draw. Never, not once, ever. The concept of the “tiebreaker” is built into the structure of the game. It’s a beautifully violent attitude: ties shall be broken! A draw will not be tolerated, it will be destroyed! Mangled! Obliterated! This match will end decisively, even if we must annihilate it! We don’t care if we have to be here for three days, play 183 games and 980 points, one of you two bastards is going to win this goddamn thing!
Conversely, soccer’s attitude towards a drawn match is much like that of your typical college-aged coffeehouse patron wearing ironically thick-rimmed eyeglasses and using their iPad to write a comment at the end of a blog post reviewing the latest Michael Haneke movie: “Meh.” Soccer is ambivalent to whether one team actually scores more than the other team during the match. Soccer just wants to run around for a while, poke the ball back and forth between players, and when the referee feels like it, regardless of the score, he arbitrarily tells everyone it’s time to stop playing. And the bizarre thing is, they do! The players just shrug and head to the pub, apprently satisfied with yet another nil-nil tie.
Of the first 31 matches playing during the 2010 World Cup, 29 of them have ended in ties. That will not happen at Wimbledon, I guarantee.
2. STFU. Soccer encourages their fans to act like obnoxious dipwads. Besotted hooligans and vuvuzelas, there’s soccer for you. Is it right that the “most popular” sport in the world is primarily associated with drunken brawling and permanent hearing loss? Apparently people believe those vuvuzela horns are cultural, but that just confirms my oft-criticized opinion that just because something is cultural does not mean it can’t be idiotic.
Tennis, on the other hand, doesn’t want you to make any noise at all. If the Wimbledon judge happens to hear a pigeon munch on a discarded Cracker Jack from the fiftieth row of the stadium, he will scold the crowd into silence in his wonderfully British tone. You have to admire any sport that is officiated by a guy sitting in a lifeguard tower who can tell a crowd of fifteen thousand people the following, in a voice so prissy it would make Hugh Grant sound like Lawrence Tierney: “If you would be SO kind as to NOT speak whilst the match BEING conducted thank you SOOO much.” And they actually listen and do as they are told. Spendid.
Is there any other place on Earth where thousands of people gather in a small area and collectively agree not to make any noise whatsoever? Other than a graveyard?
3. Unique scoring. In soccer, a goal is worth a point. Yawn. In tennis, your very first score nets you a walloping FIFTEEN points in one go! And if you score again? Another fifteen points! You’ve doubled your already ridiculous score to 30, bam! You happen to score one more time? Another fifteen points? No. Doubling the score to sixty? No! Shame on you for attempting to apply logic based on a discernible pattern. Listen up, your third score goes to forty! Why? Nobody knows! That is the brilliance of the tennis scoring system, its incoherence and abandonment of any numerical system that has ever existed in any human civilization is what keeps it interesting.
And then, once you think you may have a vague idea that this scoring system makes any sense at all, we abandon numbers altogether! Your fourth point is called “deuce”. What is a “deuce”? Your guess is as good as mine! We’re playing tennis! You want a dull, predictable numbering system that goes 1, 2*, 3*? Soccer is your game, friend.
(*NOTE: The numbers 2 and 3 are actually not needed for the soccer scoring system, as no team as ever scored more than one goal in a game.)
And, finally, my personal favorite reason why tennis is superior to soccer: 4. Adolescent servitude. When you screw up in soccer, a referee shoves a playing card in your face (a color coded card, much like Magic The Gathering), alerting the world of your purposeful ineptitude. “You have failed! As indicated by a yellow square, held aloft like so! Yellow is the color of your shame!” In tennis, once you mess up by hitting a ball long or smacking it dead into the net, a prepubescent boy leaps out from nowhere, sprints at a dead run towards the errant ball, and whisks it away, never to be seen again. Your mistakes are scooped up, dumped into a quiet void, and forgotten, as if they never happened.
In what other sport…indeed, in what other endeavor in human existence, are there impish tykes poised to spring at a nanosecond’s notice to cover up your error from the watching world?
Game. Set. Match.
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Nostalgia: April 19, 2010
02 years ago
The leather seats in my Mercedes boil away the first several layers of skin off the back of my legs, the suburban afternoon air thrums with the low moans of bored children, and Julie Chen will once again incarcerate a dozen young people whose only serious crimes involve unwise choices regarding breast implants. Summer has arrived!
Summer is the most evocative of seasons, spurring memories of youth’s lazy days, of camp, and chasing ice cream trucks, and making friends with the smelly kid because he has a pool.
This is a story of reminiscence, but I ask you not to go too far back. Crank up your sun-sautéed brain and try to remember all the way back…
…back…
…back to April 19, 2010.
On that day:
- Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot won the Boston Marathon, setting a course record time of 2:05:52.
- National Window Safety Week began.
- The annual World’s Biggest Fish Fry kicked off in Paris, Tennessee.
- Canadian person who appears in movies, Hayden Christensen, turned 29 years old.
Am I forgetting anything? Hmm.
Oh, yes, one more.
That was also the very last day in history that there was not two and a half million fucking gallons of crude oil ejaculating into the Gulf of Mexico each and every goddamn day.
Analysis: Like many think tanks around the world, the Potato Solution is feverishly attempting to come up with a way to halt this crisis. But seriously guys? I think we’re fucked.
SPUD Factor: CATACLYSMIC
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The SPUD Mandate
02 years ago
Solving all problems. It’s a bold claim. It’s a claim I’ve been making for 20 years, one that has provided the foundation for my career and my life.
I can use this blog to boast that The Potato Solution, the think tank I created, is fixing everything. But without some way of tangibly measuring our work, I don’t blame you for thinking the claim might be an false one, that this entire endeavor is little more than prideful, empty nonsense.
Therefore, we have created The SPUD Mandate. It is our mission statement, our guiding philosophy, and the motivational force to every project we agree to bring to completion.
The SPUD Mandate:
Solving Problems Unequivocally Defined
What this means is that, for a problem that I would consider solving for a client, it must be a quantifiable problem, and not merely an issue. (See below for a discussion of the difference between the two.) We use extensively researched and tested formulas here at the Potato Solution to precisely determine not only how many problems we solve, but also the global effect of our solutions when compared to the totality of problems that exist at any point in time.
To simplify these calculations, we have created The Spudometer:
The Spudometer measures, in real time, how many problems that The Potato Solution has solved, in comparison to the total number of problems that exist. As of this posting, we have solved 6.74% of the world’s* problems.
(*NOTE: As of 2010, the Spudometer only measures problems related to planet Earth and its direct satellites, both man-made and naturally occurring. Interplanetary and interdimensional problems are currently difficult to categorize, and therefore are not included in the algorithms used to generate the final Spudometer result.)
The concept of the Spudometer is based on surprisingly simple logic:
- There is a finite number of human beings who live on Planet Earth.
- Each human being has a finite number of problems.
- Therefore, there are a finite number of problems that exist on Planet Earth.
At some point in the future, when the Spudometer reaches 100%, that means all problems have been solved, and the Potato Solution will have fulfilled its purpose. The day that all problems are reduced to nonexistence will likely not occur in my lifetime, but there is no question whatsoever that this day will occur.
The SPUD Factor
In order for the Spudometer to work, problems must be measurable. Therefore, each problem that we deal with is assigned a SPUD Factor. The SPUD Factor is essential to our Spudometer calculations, for they provide the variables in our Potato Solution-proprietary equations.
For an issue to be assigned a measurable SPUD Factor, it must meet the requirements that are inherent in the name:
- It must be a solvable problem.
- It must be defined without conditions or exceptions.
As an example, the following situations are considered issues, and would NOT fall under the SPUD Mandate:
- “Perhaps I should cut my toenails before the weekend.” (No definable problem to fix.)
- “I have a vague sense that a spiteful God wants to kill me.” (While this could potentially develop into a problem, intuition alone is not enough to warrant action against the whims of deities.)
- “I wish [female reality show contestant] would follow my Twitter feed.” (A statement of purpose is not a problem. Nobody ever got their wishes by blowing out candles on their birthday cake. Goals are achieved by actions, not intentions.)
Now, the following situations are explicable, solvable problems, so they WOULD be assigned a SPUD Factor:
- “My grandmother is on fire.” (Nearly every crisis situation is a definable problem, and immolation, by choice or through misadventure or malfeasance, is no exception.)
- “The Macedonian antiques forger I contracted to create a fake Tiffany porcelain cheetah sculpture originally agreed to one-fifty for the job, but now is demanding double. And I’ve already promised it to my mark on Craigslist for three twenty-five. If I don’t buy the cheetah from the Macedonian, he has threatened to send incriminating evidence to Interpol, but if I go through with the deal, once I add shipping I’ll actually lose money on this grift!” (“Negotiation” is another word for problem, and the very essence of the SPUD Mandate is that every problem can be fixed. Everything is negotiable. Jail time can nearly always be avoided through logic, strategic flattery, and controlling your emotions.)
- “I dropped an open container of Jalapeño pepper jam on my garage floor. The jar is unbroken, but there is moderate spillage.” (I don’t know, get a moistened paper towel or something. Christ, do I have to explain every little thing?)
Once a problem has been solved, its SPUD Factor is input into our Spudometer algorithms. But if I’ve learned one thing from this blog, it’s that numbers are booooring! So, for the purposes of simplification, SPUD Factors on this blog are given a descriptive, rather than numerical rating. The ratings generally range from NEGLIGIBLE to GARGANTUAN. Why, just posting this long-winded explanation of how the Spudometer works has been assigned a SPUD Factor of NOTEWORTHY, and has been entered into the Spudometer equations.
See? Fixing everything! Now you know how we do it.
So relax. We got this.
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Oh, A Mighty Wind’s A Blowin’: Saving Your Marriage?
03 years ago
A New Jersey company has introduced a revolutionary new product called the Better Marriage Blanket. (Video provided in the link.)
It’s a blanket that (theoretically) makes your marriage better. How can a blanket do this? Fart assimilation. This blanket was apparently designed by top military scientists (some technical engineers create gas bombs, while others, apparently, work on ways to absorb them). Through a highly sophisticated osmosis-like chemical process, farts are captured, squeezed into a molecular ball comprised of pure carbon (similar to the process of collapsing star), then shot into the ionosphere before a spouse and/or domestic partner can sense any odor at all.
It’s brilliant, but is it necessary? Here at the Potato Solution, we say no.
Farts are essential to any healthy marriage. In the beginning, honeymoon stages, they provide a means for bonding rituals, as the young couple laugh and tease each other over their aeriform emissions. Once the couple begin reproducing, farts cannot be smelled over the hideously noxious fumes that emanate from children, rendering the Better Marriage Blanket unnecessary. Then, after many years, the children are able to wash their own filth independently, negating a healthy portion of their odors; body gas becomes detectable again. However, by this point, most of the sexual activity in the marriage has dissipated, so the only way for the married couple to share true intimacy is through smelling each other’s farts. It’s the primary means by which a middle-aged couple is able to wordlessly say to each other, “My dearest, even after all this time, I still love you to the point where I’m comfortable to really let one go and not care what you think about it.”
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Department of Education Proves: “Girls Rule, Boys Drool”
23 years ago
The Department of Education claims that there is a growing gender gap amongst college graduates in the United States. According to their analysis, detailed in this blog post by the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute, women will outnumber men in almost all degree levels in 2010, following a nearly 30 year pattern. (NOTE: This study mentions only two genders, it is unknown how the DoE categorizes hermaphrodites, eunuchs, and Na’vi.)
The article mentions that the trend favoring females in the college degree gender gap began in 1982, but fails to explain what happened that year to start the pattern. What was it about 1982 that certified sugar and spice are superior to snips, snails, and puppy dog tails at our institutions of higher learning?
POTATO SOLUTION THEORY #1: The Future!
Time magazine named The Computer as their person of the year for 1982. (Whose computer, specifically? That detail is lost to time, but it was probably some nerd.) Imagine being a young woman in the dawning days of the Reagan Administration, thinking your only chance at a fulfilling career was landing the right secretarial job that gave you the best chance of finding a husband that would support you and your 13 babies (birth rates in the early 80s were slightly higher compared to today).
But then, Time Magazine comes along and, in one sweep of its Time-arm, pushes the entire male half of the species aside for a machine. A machine that could run Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress, true, but a machine nonetheless. One that was incapable of sperm production, let alone a means of transporting it into your run-of-the-mill uterus.
Now that Men of the Year were no longer hominids, therefore declaring all males useless, young women needed to find another role to fulfill, and quickly. Grey’s Anatomy was still 23 years away, so women collectively decided to spend their energies on education. In 1982, women realized that a college degree was better than a husband in innumerable ways: a degree would always be useful, would never feel inadequate about making less money than a woman, would satisfy the expansive female imagination, and wouldn’t spend Thanksgiving dinner watching porn in the basement while the woman tried desperately to stoke awkward conversation with her judgmental in-laws.
POTATO SOLUTION THEORY #2: Diet Coke.
Diet Coke was introduced on Independence Day, 1982. With the help of their advertising slogan (“Just for the taste of it!”), it soon became the most popular low-calorie soda. The aspartame-infused drink is still extremely popular with diet-conscious females who want the taste of acidic, vanilla-like syrup mixed with carbonated water, but without the high fructose corn syrup.
A recent Potato Solution policy research group conducted a study that determined 97 out of 100 typical women who drink Diet Coke would rather live without their right elbow than live without Diet Coke. (A study that attempted to conduct a similar test using Diet Coke With Lime had to be halted when researchers sustained minor blunt-force injuries after a control group were told they would have to abstain from the beverage for one week.)
For the most part, men continued to drink regular Coke, making them sluggish, fat, and greatly appealing to meat-eating predators. Women, on the other hand, switched en masse to Diet Coke, giving them a caffeinated mental boost while keeping them limber and preventing them from being bogged down with sugar, thereby they were better able to run from hungry panthers…and navigate the dangerous corridors of universities.
POTATO SOLUTION THEORY #3: Dolly Parton.
1982 saw the release of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the motion picture adaptation of the smash Broadway musical. The film starred Dolly Parton as Miss Mona, an entrepreneur specializing in “personal relaxation” (or whatever euphemism that your local free weekly paper uses for the pages and pages of “escorts” in their classified ads).
For the first time ever, young women saw that it was possible to own a business all their own, and that a college degree would be essential in learning skills such as human resources, marketing, leveraging profits, disease prevention, physical rehabilitation, international relations, forensic analysis, psychology, and some light nursing. The only thing young women couldn’t learn at school in 1982 was how to handle Burt Reynolds…but honey, some things you just have to learn for yourself.
In space, nobody can hear your embryo implanter
13 years ago
Here at the Potato Solution, we fix things.
Typically, fixing requires some form of tool. To fix a scratched DVD, you need Windex. To fix a garbage disposal, you need a sandblaster. To fix a broken leg, you need fiberglass, a vibrating saw, a nail gun, a thick strip of cured leather to bite down on, and an orderly stack of freshly laundered towels.
At a think tank, however, the tool we use is our minds. Ultimately, brains are the only tools that will significantly Fix All Problems. It can be done. We are doing it.
The reason I’m going on about tools is to make somewhat of a disclaimer. The vast majority of the tools used here at the Potato Solution are of terrestrial origin…that is, they are manufactured and utilized here on Earth. If ever we choose to use alien technology to fix the problems of human beings, I promise I will let you know here, first.
Most tools of alien manufacture, in fact, do not serve the process of problem solving very well. In fact, taking a close inspection of the tools listed in that link, I have no choice but to conclude that the majority of them would cause more problems than they fix. For example:
- Mind Scan. To use this device, according to the description, the user must “move very close to the abductee, sometime to the point of touching the persons nose.” Well, what is the point of a mind scanner if I have to get close enough to my victim to smell his breath? The primary advantage to telepathy, in my view, is being able to glean information from strangers without having to be close enough to smell them.
- Embryo Implantation. With this device, aliens “insert the fertilized egg into the women.” So far I am following the logic. However, once the woman becomes pregnant, “the alien seems not to care.” Whoa, hold on there, Mork. You damn well better care. Implanting the embryo is the easy part…did you even consider whether your alien baby incubator was abducted from a country with socialized medicine? What if you abducted an American, what are you going to do if she has an HMO? What primary care physician worth anything is going to approve the expenses involved with alien fetus development? What if she doesn’t have insurance at all, are taxpayers expected to shoulder the cost of delivery? Especially considering the alien/human baby hybrid may have any number of complications, including but not limited to extra limbs, tentacles, antennae, reptilian skin and/or acid blood?
I think I’ve made my point, no need to discuss the thin logic behind the embryo extractor and sperm collector (“Resembles a dentist’s lights”? Alrighty then.) If tools are going to be used to fix things, they need to be thoroughly vetted. The primary tools used here at the Potato Solution – the minds of our Thinkologists – are finely honed, vigorously maintained, are mostly soundproof, and contain no frayed wiring.
It’s too bad the creator of the list of alien tools was not able to finish their descriptions of the “knowledge transfer”, “the wand”, and, oh so mysteriously named: “The ‘Pool’” The author must have just got distracted with other things…
…or was he?
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Do You Really Want To Rent Me?
03 years ago
All right, now. You’ve all had your fun. Enough is most certainly enough.
Many of you out there have had your seedy chuckles at the expense of George Alan Rekers, the Family Research Council founder and fervent anti-homosexual activist who recently returned from a 10-day European gaycation with a rented male escort. (See, now you’ve got me involved in these ugly jokes. For shame.)
Self-righteous individuals who are deluded into thinking they are funny (such as Stephen Colbert) are taking their feeble shots at Mr. Rekers, but I refuse to join the cacophony of finger wagging.
I would never chase such low-hanging fruit. I have pride. From top to bottom, this blog will always be uncut, but I refuse to drag this issue out of the closet and cause a flame war. Does this make me a chicken? I don’t twink so. My advice to Rekers is to bear this juvenile humor for now, face it head on, be firm, do not try to slip out the back door. I know all of this is uncomfortable at first, Mr. Rekers, you just need to relax and eventually it will get easier. Soon the rain of men with idiotic humor will peter out, the clouds will swish away, and you will see the rainbow.
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