I’m a billionaire

It’s all about the benjamins.

zimbabwe1

And by benjamins, I mean Mugabea-ns.

A coworker’s pastor was able to acquire a couple of these Zimbabwean bank notes and has been distributing them like wallpaper.  Wait, I can’t use that metaphor anymore because it’s actually happening.

It’s a depressing story, but you can find cocktail chatter here. Like how the same company that printed money for the hyperinflated Weimar Republic also was pumping out Zimbabwe’s notes until last year.  Or how Zimbabwe’s bank has to churn out dollars 24/7 to satisfy the wheelbarows of money it takes to even get a bus ride.

Anyway, I’m not technically a 5-billionaire because the bill expired at the beginning of the year (who makes bills that expire?!)  So I’m not sure what I should do with the note. Any suggestions?

More about Zimbabwe’s history here.

Blockbuster, you make it so easy for me to hate you

Once again Blockbuster has silently changed their terms of service and removed the single greatest advantage they had over Netflix:

If you exchange your online rental for a free in-store movie rental at a participating store, that store rental will count towards the number of rentals you are allowed out for your online Total Access plan.

Thanks for at least notifying me of this bullshit, guys. I had to dig around in your unlinked-to FAQ only after realizing after a week that my next disc hadn’t shipped.

Apparently this is all part of Blockbuster’s attempt to drop customers. Seriously. CEO Jim Keyes says he wants to “prune the tree” of its least profitable consumers, so only suckers remain. Well, Mission Accomplished.

The best part about all this is that behind the scenes, apparently the driving force behind the “piss on your most loyal customers” strategy is billionaire jackass, Carl Icahn:

Blockbuster’s online program had been a source of contention within the company. Former CEO and chairman John Antioco, who led the company for a decade, saw online movie rentals as the future of the industry. Some investors and board members, led by Carl Icahn, believed management was spending too much money too fast in the online business while neglecting the core source of their income: Retail stores.

You can read lots more about Blockbuster’s sordid history online here.

The Libertarian Party…

an enduring source of hilarity.

Reading through The Economist from a few weeks back, I saw this snippet in their profile of the LP’s presidential candidate, Bob Barr:

His moralistic fervour faltered only when it came to his own conduct: twice divorced, he was once photographed licking whipped cream off the breasts of a particularly buxom woman. He says he was raising money for leukaemia research. (Well, he would, wouldn’t he?)

I suppose it’s better than turning your entire body blue by drinking a homemade panacea made of silver.  But here’s to you, Libertarian Party.  Thanks for lowering the bar for political scandal and degradation.

NPR pwned me

Every year I’m the butt of at least a dozen April Fool’s jokes.  The totally obvious ones I can figure out, but once a prank exhibits the slightest bit of subtlety, I’m a sucker.

Take this story from American Public Media’s Marketplace.  While driving home today I was listening to the show and started to hear about how the IRS is targeting folks deep in debt, and using the economic stimulus to send them consumer goods instead of cash:

Armed with a huge IRS database, Beverly and others like her have spent the last few months identifying taxpayers who’d be most likely to use their rebate checks to pay off debt.

Jaworsky: Someone who may be listing their house on the market as a short sale, for instance. Or students with student loans. Or screenwriters.

Then those taxpayers get special rebates.

Jaworsky: Instead of receiving that check that they were going to receive, we send it to them in the form of retail goods, in relative value to what their check would have been.

Listening to this story, I was getting pissed.  Who the hell did these people think they were?

And then I hear the host say this at the end:

RYSSDAL: Oh, c’mon, check your calendars, everybody.

Ugh. I got pwned.