Hold on to your heads, kids, because this week has been a doozy! I’ve learned so much that I can’t wait to share with you. Riding your bike and ordering pizza at the same time? Totally doable. Being crowned Russia’s most prolific serial killer, with 63 murders under your belt? A bit more complicated (read below). Designing a logo for the CIA that doesn’t look like something your little brother cooked up? Improbable. The talents of my fellow humans continue to send a nice shiver down my spine.
FEMA has fake reporters attend real press conference
Forget the media’s liberal bias and reality’s liberal bias, what I’d like to confirm once and for all is the media’s Ancient Greek Philosopher bias. I tried calling the media for comment five minutes ago, but it went straight to voicemail. So I’ll just fill in both parts of the dialog for you.
To begin: After the fires in California, FEMA called a press conference last week to be transparent about their response. They invited reporters 15 minutes prior; media outlets without a teleporter machine could put their reporters on a listen-only conference line. To make up for the missing reporters (questions?), FEMA employees filled in, asking FEMA’s deputy administrator such toughies as “What is your name? What is your quest? What is your favorite color?”
The Ancient Greek is Socrates, whose humbly named Socratic Method is apparently the media’s darling, a love child born of Anderson Cooper and Larry King. I won’t explain the Socratic Method as that might unintentionally poison you with the elitist juice so often seen seeping from under the doors of philosophy departments. But suffice it to say, it has something to do with finding answers through questions. Yeah, “The fuck?” was my first reaction too.
So the media likes to ask questions. Harassing, abusive questions. When our patriotic brethren at FEMA tried to appease the big, scary media last Tuesday by actually answering questions, they were attacked and mocked by insurgent media-sympathizers who hurled tough, explosive questions at the controversy.
Maybe the media should just let FEMA do its job, and go back to its own work of asking questions.
Zimbabwe officials sell the farm for magic oil
The federal government gave away $5 billion in taxpayer money and a farm (it almost hurts how one can’t just make this stuff up) in pursuit of a magic rock that oozes oil. Leaders fell for a woman’s claims that she could point a stick at a rock and cause it to spontaneously erupt with fully refined diesel fuel.
I appreciate your thinking that this was the work of our very own United States federal government, but come on guys, give them a little more credit. Believing that stuff just magically appears out of thin air? Not these guys.
This was the concerted effort of the Zimbabwean government and its leader, Robert Mugabe. And in their defense, the $5 billion is in Zimbabwean dollars, which by my calculations and an 8,000 percent inflation rate, is less than $5,000 in American dollars today.
Nomatter Tagarira, a “spirit medium,” found an abandoned oil barrel at the top of a hill and thought to hook up a pipe to it leading to the bottom of the hill. In demonstrations of her “magic” for government officials, when she struck the rock, her assistants would let some fuel flow out. When she ran out, she bought more from local truck drivers.
Eventually, a second task force of government ministers and security personnel uncovered her ruse But her scam lasted fifteen months.
Her real skill seems to be smooth talking the media and government officials. Maybe FEMA is hiring?
Chess & Punishment: The dangerous side of those 64 squares
You dedicate your life to the pursuit of perfection. Your hobby becomes your life blood and food source. Then the Man comes and spits in your face and shatters your dreams. Wow, your life needs some cheering up.
Alexander Pichushkin, who continues my obsession with all things Russia, was aiming to be the most prolific murderer in Russian history. With the last record set at 50 murders, he had a significant hurdle to surmount, but with guts (lots of guts, and blood too) he persevered. He maintains that he killed 63 people, which gives him 13 more dead bodies than the amateur “Rostov Ripper” who was convicted in 1992.
But Pichushkin wasn’t going on an unending killing rampage. His killing had a ceiling: 64 people, one each for every square on a chessboard. The police found in his apartment a chessboard where every square but one was covered with a coin to represent a victim.
Since 15 of those bodies were not found, Pichushkin was only convicted of 48 murders, making him just two shy of the record.
Unfortunately, accumulating so many murders to one’s name requires being skillful in hiding large numbers of decomposing bodies. Pichushkin was so adept at this that his own brilliance is the only thing keeping him from holding the Russian record.
Word on the street is that for the right price and a farm, there’s a spirit medium who can conjure up at least 15 bodies for him.