Dear United States Congress;
It has come to our attention that you have not made any payments on your debt in five years. Please make arrangements for payment or further action will be taken. Failure to pay may also negatively impact your credit rating and devalue your currency.
We understand that these are difficult times, and we are happy to offer several payment options to you. At present, your account shows a negative balance of $7,782,816,546,352.54.
On a related note, we’d like to thank you in advance for the passage of the bankruptcy overhaul bill. We believe you are quite right when you say that it is time for people to “take a little responsibility” and “stop living beyond their means.”
Still, we can not agree with your request that this action “count” as “a sort of in-kind payment, maybe.” Your debt is your own, and we would recommend that you apply for some sort of credit counseling that could help you square your revenues with your expenditures.
We’d also like to point out that under the new law, your credit counseling is mandatory and must be paid for at your own expense.
Thank you once again for choosing us, and please don’t hesitate to call if you have any further questions regarding your account.
Sincerely,
Brian T. Cornason, Vice President, Cosmic Irony Division
Universal Credit Services, LTD.
Fanny Roborat
56 comments
madbard
April 14, 2005 at 4:19 pm
1damn straight. i call dibs on ANWR and the Florida gulf coast for immediate oil exploration.
tim
April 14, 2005 at 4:44 pm
2I hear Ditech has some excellent debt consolidation loans. Boy, will that guy on the commercial get mad if he loses this one!
Thompson
April 14, 2005 at 4:51 pm
3Ooooh! Ooooh! Can I bid early on a few senators? I’d love to have Mr. Obama in my livingroom! He’d make a great conversat… -sound of hushed whispering-
What do you mean, they’re only selling off the government’s assETS?
Sue
April 14, 2005 at 5:01 pm
4Personally, I’d consider making a pled…er, contribution if it would assure me a position in the Cosmic Irony Division. The business cards alone would be worth a bundle!
David
April 14, 2005 at 5:50 pm
5So 7,782 billionaires driven by a sense of patriotism could personally retire this debt, if like the soldiers who have died in Iraq, they would be willing to give their all for freedom (in this case from debt for the greatest nation in the history of mankind)?
Pete in Van Diemen's Land
April 14, 2005 at 6:08 pm
6Wouldn’t it be Universally Ironic if that was not just the US debt, but also the Great Lobster’s phone number? Ooooooohhhhhh (sorry, can’t sing the Twilight Zone theme)
tess
April 14, 2005 at 6:16 pm
7. . . My, my, the pot’s calling the kettle black, isn’t it? Pity we don’t have a foreign oil backer rich enough to bail us out of this one.
Mojo
April 14, 2005 at 7:05 pm
8As a letter from our creditors, shouldn’t this be written in Chinese?
Paul
April 14, 2005 at 8:46 pm
9David, unfortunately, according to Forbes, there are only 691 billionaires in the entire world…
Murray
April 14, 2005 at 9:14 pm
10Paul, but many of them have more than 1 billion.
Don’t tell me,.. the mandatory credit counseling has been contracted to Halliburton. Gee, how’d I guess?
hedera
April 14, 2005 at 10:12 pm
11Chinese and Japanese, Mojo. Chinese and Japanese.
Carl Franklin
April 14, 2005 at 10:22 pm
12Dear Adam,
Your little diatribe attacking the United States Government exposes you as the wise-cracking ignorant hypocrite you truly are.
As a member of the Senate I have access to your personal records. It seems that your own personal credit history is peppered with missed motgage payments, late car payments, two loan defaults, and something about investment property in Israel.
I also find it interesting that you recently got a speeding ticket for going 75 in a school zone! What are you crazy? I bet you were drunk too!
The problem with you young drivers today is that you have no consideration for pedestrians! Or even your own passengers, for that matter!! Smarten up, kid!!!
Signed,
Ted Kennedy
United States Senator
Massachusetts
Katie
April 15, 2005 at 12:10 am
13…..and 54 cents.
ROFLMAO!!!!
Not quite sure why, but the 54 cents landed this one squarely in the hysterical pile.
on another tangent all together; when did they remove the ‘cents’ symbol from the keyboard? I have a tilda, several cuss words, more bracketing options than I could ever possibly use, slashes forward and back, all of the standard punctuation marks as enumerated by Victor Borge, 26 letters, and numbers 0-9. Where the hell did the cents go?! Was a c with a bisecting slash somehow unAmuurican? Did Bill Gates buy the right to the symbol, and it will forever be deeply imbedded in Microsoft; soon to be as odd a memory as the Neutra-Sweet Gumball, Wink Soda, and telephone booths?!
Stop this insanity!!!!!!
ani
April 15, 2005 at 2:04 am
14under that legislation, even the brokest of the broke still pay it back to their creditors if they file for bancruptcy. I’d say -7,782,000,000,000,000 counts as being broke. why is everyone so focused on taxes (or lack of them) as job stimulus and economy boosters when our debt is a way bigger issue. If our creditors decide the dollar isn’t worth the cheap @ss paper it is printed on, no amount of tax breaks in the world will help the economy then.
Landis
April 15, 2005 at 2:15 am
15On my keyboard they hide the cents under the dollars. ¢¢¢¢¢¢ (I’ve got to hold option down and hit 4 instead of shift). 54¢ see! (If this doesn’t work for you, try a Mac)
You know, if it’s not a medical bankruptcy it’s most like a small-business bankruptcy. So they’re hurting the very people they claim to love so much. Most people who start a small business use credit cards to finance it (I know I do). This just increases the fear in starting a small business. Bankruptcy is never a good option, but it’s nice to know that your life won’t be permanently ruined by trying to live the American dream. Now if I can’t get this thing off the ground, I’ll never be able to get off the mat.
And the credit card offers keep coming….
Tom M
April 15, 2005 at 3:46 am
16Your problem is going to really come when one of two things happen.
1) Oil starts being traded in Euros
2) we run out of oil.
More than half the actual dollars in circulation are held by Japanese and European banks and governments, and the reason they are willing to hold vast amounts of currency that they cannot use to buy American goods and services (because you don’t produce enough at the right price), is because they can use those reserves to buy oil. However, there are signs that some oil producers, notibly Russia, are switching to selling oil for Euros, since most of their business is with Europe. With the weakness of the dollar OPEC has been talking about switching to sing Euros, at which point the value of the dollar would collapse, and the size of your debt increase accordingly. Not good.
Overland
April 15, 2005 at 7:34 am
17Just in the time we’ve been posting, national debt is now $ 7,801,317,300,086.25 …and rising too fast to keep up. Track the outrage at:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Ah, but people in high places tell us it doesn’t matter.
Mary
April 15, 2005 at 9:25 am
18That’s right, the national debt doesn’t matter. Neither does the weak dollar nor the death toll in Iraq. But Social Security is a different matter.
(My head is starting to hurt again. Back to the underground.)
David
April 15, 2005 at 10:42 am
19So Bush is right - not enough billionaires to save our asses. Well, damned, and to think I doubted the towering wisdom of the Tax Whacker-in-Chief.
Bri
April 15, 2005 at 11:15 am
20Sell California to Canada! Please. I mean it - eh. No. really. It won’t pay off all the debt, but will dent the amount owed. Yeah hay.
Just practicing. You betcha.
Bri
Johnnyboy
April 15, 2005 at 11:57 am
21So you assume we’d want to buy it ? As anyone who follows current canadian politics knows (everyone on this board, I’m sure), we’ve got enough corrupt dumbasses in our government - we certainly don’t need the Ahhnold to top it off.
Thompson
April 15, 2005 at 12:11 pm
22Now, now, Johnny, look at it as a sliding scale. It’s a hell of a lot better than threatening to sell Canada a great big case of Mr. DeLay.
llelldorin
April 15, 2005 at 12:51 pm
23If it helps, Johnny, we come with a heck of a lot of really outstanding wine, which might blunt the pain of getting our governor in the deal.
We’ve also got a top-notch university system, an enormous second-tier university system, and some really nice ports. We also have several large cities that would help Toronto feel less out of place. (Greater Los Angeles has somewhere betwee twice and three times the population of the GTA, for example).
C’mon, you know you want to. Nice, warm Pacific beaches with no freakin’ giant mountains in the way…
Mary
April 15, 2005 at 1:51 pm
24Johnnyboy-
While I can’t blame Canada for not wanting California, just think of the fun Rick Mercer would have on “Monday Report” dealing with the ’southwest’ insanity 8-D
Auros
April 15, 2005 at 2:35 pm
25Screw the silly cents symbol, I want a keyboard that gives me an efficient way to type in foreign scripts.
क्षीरचै !!
David
April 15, 2005 at 2:47 pm
26How about Canada buying Florida? Canadians have always been attracted to the Sunshine State, I like the look of the Canadian flag, and if my grandson is ever sent a draft notice, I would not have to take him and my son 2,000 or so miles up the road into mountains of snow.
Besides, Florida has already been under five flags, not to mention pre-flag days under environmentally responsible pre-Columbian Asian/Americans. A sixth flag should be no big deal. Florida could then also become tri-lingual, which I personally think would be a wonderful idea.
And I think we should name the new entity Canflo, Inc., make it a publicly traded commodity with the stock market moniker Canflo, then enjoy the bloviating of Larry Kudlow.
Johnnyboy
April 15, 2005 at 4:03 pm
27Maybe we could be talked into just buying the canadian-oid parts ? SF would be nice, we could just rename it South Vancouver. And the northern coast would be cool too - think of all the fun we could have clubbing baby sea otters to death ! But you can keep Malibu - we’re covered beach-wise, we already practically own Hollywood FLA.
Pete in Van Diemen's Land
April 15, 2005 at 5:35 pm
28Katie, if you’re using a relatively recent version of Windoze, you can use the Character Map to stick in soon-to-be-obsolete symbols. Try Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Character Map. Or summink like that. Just remember, with rounding and so on, that ¢ symbol is really an endangered species!
On a less slightly unrelated note, I find it interesting that the VDL goverment has taken all the credit for our US exchange rate to rise from less than 55¢ to over 70¢… meanwhile, on the cross rates, we have not changed by more than 0.1€, 3 yen, and we’ve actually dropped by about 8p sterling in the same time. It’s the old situation - when the river sweeps the boat downstream, the poll-aticians all shout “See how fast we’re making this boat move?”… THen the current slows, the boat stops, and the poll-aticians blame the weather, the global downturn, etc, etc.
I have no idea what our national debt is. Probably about US$3,134.18. That’s 6 sexquillion bucks locally.
Bob
April 15, 2005 at 6:53 pm
29Congress: Yallo?
Collector: Hi, am I speaking to Mr., uh, Us Congress?
Congress: (warily) Yeah?
Collector: Mr. Congress, I’m calling from the Webrekkaufingas Debt Collection agency. Our records show that you owe, let’s see–no, that can’t be right, there isn’t that much money in the country. Anyway, you have a large outstanding credit balance, and we need you to start paying it off.
Congress: Look, is this so important that you have to call right in the middle of Survivor?
Collector: It’s very important, Mr. Congress. Your credit rating is at stake. Couldn’t you just Tivo Survivor?
Congress: You people took the Tivo last week. So it’s really your fault, in a way. So what are you going to do to make it up to me?
Collector: I think you’re losing the thread of the conversation here, Mr. Congress. We really need to see some of that money. Could you make a payment of, say, a couple of billion dollars by Monday?
Congress: Where am I going to lay my hands on money like that?
Collector: Well, you could reinstate the inheritance tax, for starters.
Congress: No can do, sonny. You want Paris Hilton to be broke and out on the streets? Well, actually, that would be pretty amusing. Bad example.
Collector: So we can expect to see that money on Monday?
Congress: I could send you a government bond for that amount.
Collector: One of those bonds that your president keeps saying is worthless?
Congress: It’s only those bonds in the Social Security trust fund that are worthless. You can tell they’re phony just by looking at ‘em. Take my word for it, George Washington never had a mullet.
Collector: Just the same, we’d like to see some cash. Look, Mr. Congress, I’m sure you don’t want your employer to hear about this horrible debt of yours. According to our records, you work for a Mr. John Q. Public.
Congress: (laughing hysterically) Oh, yeah! Tell him! Like he really cares! Whenever he asks about the debt, I tell him that I’m the only one capable of keeping gay people from getting married and copulating on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Though come to think of it, that would be pretty uncomfortable.
Collector: OK, Mr. Congress, looks like we’ve reached an impasse. At this point, the only thing we can do to protect our investment is to lend you more money. Will about 10 billion see you through next week?
Congress: Sounds about right.
Collector: Talk to you in a week, then.
Congress: OK. But could you wait until the end of Survivor?
Jerry
April 15, 2005 at 7:51 pm
30Johnnyboy - as a native Californian, I would like to assure you that California is available without the optional Governor!
Further, the coastal area is available separately. While the Central Valley is a real money-maker, it is practically unlivable due to an accumulation of pesticides and ignorant Republican voters. Unfortunately, I feel it only fair to tell you that, since sea otters were hunted almost to extinction in the 1800s, they have changed their behavio(u)r, and no longer pull out of the sea to be clubbed. On the bright side, thousands of sea elephants infest our shores, and, if you had the inclination to bash a 2000 pound (909 kilo) nasty tempered critter on the nose, they would be available at no extra cost.
Please note that Santa Monica with it’s large population of British expats and homeless people would not be part of the deal!
Pete IVDL - We decline to accept bids from any country with Howard as PM. Like, we already have the Yellow Rose, right?
Otherwise, to paraphrase Dangerfield, “Take us, pleae!”
Auros
April 15, 2005 at 9:06 pm
31It’s much easier to get Character Map by doing Start -> Run -> “charmap”.
Which is how I created the Devanagari string above, which probably registers as question-marks or boxes for most of you.
Allison in Santa Cruz
April 15, 2005 at 9:10 pm
32Jerry - I’d like to see someone taking on a male elephant seal. Now THAT would be some awesome TV! And while the otters no longer sit there and wait for the club, they have discovered other ways to pass the time. Morgan, for example, is a sea otter that was rehabilitated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He never was properly socialized with other otters, though, and when they released him (complete with ID tags so he could be monitored) they found him forcefully copulating with harbor seal pups. Killed some of ‘em, actually. He has since been recaptured, so harbor seals in the area can breathe a quick sigh of relief.
And as another native Californian, I have to agree with Jerry that Canada doesn’t want the central valley, as it’s so staunchly red. Back in October I was in Bakersfield with my husband to attend his class reunion. Coming from Santa Cruz, we’d blissfully forgotten how Republican that part of the state is, and were appalled at all of the Bush-Cheny 2004 signs we saw on lawns and billboards. Gave me the willies.
Regarding the national debt: Obviously, the Republican strategy is to create more billionaires by offering tax cuts to the merely millionaires and eliminating the inheritance tax, then lean on them to do the “patriotic” thing and give their financial all for good old American democracy. But before you can get the billionaires to chip in, you have to make enough billionaires.
Can any of these politicians even balance a checkbook?
Jerry
April 15, 2005 at 10:03 pm
33Allison - The elephant seal pull out just north of here above San Simeon is a favorite spot for Rosie and me. We have seen the most amazing things that people do there. Not only do the fools go out in the midst of a pod to have their picture taken, or just get a “close-up” look, but they send their children out among these territorial, horny, mean-tempered guys to photograph them!!! Just amazing, but I guess that would be part of natural selection, if the docents didn’t stop them now.
Allison in Santa Cruz
April 15, 2005 at 10:42 pm
34Jerry - What a perfect opportunity for some much-needed chlorination of the gene pool! Still, I guess you can’t really blame people for what they honestly don’t know. Ignorance is not the same as stupidity, even by my liberal definition. I’d have less sympathy if they were warned by docents not to let their kids get close to the e-seals, AND THEN sat little Johnny on the back of a bull to take a photo.
The closest I’ve come to an inadvertent encounter with an elephant seal occurred when I was on a collecting trip north of Ano Nuevo (one of the biggest e-seal colonies in CA). We had hiked over the dunes and onto the beach, then rounded a corner and almost walked smack into the slumbering beast. It was either a female or a juvenile male, thank Lobster, of I might not be here today.
Very cool animals, though. For mammals.
Jerry
April 15, 2005 at 10:52 pm
35Allison - I don’t blame people for ignorance…Lobster knows I have a blind spot or two myself, but what idiot sends their kids out to frolic with several bulls which they have seen fucking any available cow, and trying to crush each other?!?!
But, yeah, could we for Lobster’s sake, let people take themselves out of the gene pool? At least here in this country, there seems to be a concerted effort to preserve the least desirable genes!
Not that evolution is anything more than a “theory!”
the other dave
April 15, 2005 at 11:15 pm
36Geologically speaking, those of us living west of the great San Andreas will eventually be living closer to Canada than the rest of California.
We might as well get used to it now, eh?
Hosers
Pete in Van Diemen's Land
April 15, 2005 at 11:30 pm
37Jerry, every poor bugger who tries to do the right thing and take themselves out of the gene pool gets hammered by anti-euthanasia laws. And the poor dumb twits who really don’t know that a 1-ton(ne) bull seal will squash their offspring to a kind of squidgy red pulp are the same ones who sue the county for not putting up “Danger: Bull seals can crush your kids” signs. Sigh. And (and this is a pretty broad brush I’m using here, but if you guys can turn the US debt into copulating mammals, I can do the reverse
they’re probably the same dumb critters who use one credit card to pay off the others. Ad infinitum.
Maybe there’s a sign under the water for the bull seals to ignore humans dumber than themselves? Gary Larson should have something on this.
On another other subject, is it really true that pesticides cause Republicanism? Sounds like a post hoc, ergo propter hoc to me. Pardon my schoolboy language.
Jerry
April 16, 2005 at 3:17 am
38PETE - SNERK!
tess
April 16, 2005 at 5:59 am
39If someone does buy California, can we start an extermination program to make the Central Coast bearable? Mostly by killing off all the rich Republicans who move here and write stupid opinion columns in the local paper? The kind of people who want a FUCKING WALMART in the community but moved to SLO because it’s “quaint” — the majority of my fellow engineers and I would like to see them and their Bush/Cheney/Gröpenfüher-voting habits wiped clean off the face of the planet.
David
April 16, 2005 at 9:03 am
40Q. Do pesticides cause Republicanism?
A. Tom Delay.
Jerry
April 16, 2005 at 11:00 am
41tess - Don’t fforget that the Marketplace (what a cozy, friendly name, eh?) is supported by TEXAS investors! Co-incidence…I think not!
Pete in Van Diemen's Land
April 16, 2005 at 6:34 pm
42Er, pahdon my Van Diemen’s Land backwardism, but what’s a docent? I’ve seen the word, just never actually used. Like bailiwick, or harangue.
Q. What’s a baby seal’s favourite drink?
A. Canadian Club (on the rocks).
The oldies are the goodies.
Murray
April 16, 2005 at 8:40 pm
43Back in a former life, when I was a naturalist in a state park in Ohio, a fellow naturalist said that he once witnessed Darwin Award parents put honey on the heads of their children so that they could photograph a black bear lick it off.
Ten years earlier, camping with my parents in the Smokies, a bear went through our stuff and bit a hole in a heavy cast iron frying pan. I have not lost my respect for them since.
hedera
April 16, 2005 at 9:07 pm
44Pete IVDL, a docent is a volunteer who goes through a course of training so they can guide random groups of visitors around a natural attraction or a museum. I do water aerobics with a lady who just qualified as a docent at the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley, much less threatening than 800 lb. bull sea lions at Año Nuevo.
I still recall with bemusement the story my husband and I heard at Yosemite one winter. We attended a formal dinner at the Ahwahnee Hotel, and shared a table with the manager of Wawona, which is a sort of satellite spa to Yosemite where people stay in rustic cabins, and play golf. The golf course is inhabited by a herd of deer, and the man told an exasperated story of the man who seated his 5 year old son ON THE BACK of a 6 point buck, so he could take a photo! Fortunately (or unfortunately if you take the Darwinian point of view) the boy - and the deer - came out of the experience unharmed. But the manager said, they do this all the time…
By the way, in this case “rustic” means “the bathroom is down the veranda”… But Wawona is staggeringly expensive for all that.
Murray
April 17, 2005 at 10:01 am
45You know what would also make a good photo for Darwin Award parents? A shot of the hilarious look on the faces of the interstate drivers as they realize that there are children lying right in front of them, in the road.
Pete in Van Diemen's Land
April 17, 2005 at 4:16 pm
46Maybe you could roll Republicans in honey and feed ‘em to the bears. Then you can keep California as part of the Union.
Murray, I’m with you - anything that can bite through cast iron gets my immediate and utter respect. And anyone who puts their offspring on a deer (a DEER, for Lobster’s sake, with all those pointy bits, and the twitching, and the running in front of traffic), or coats ‘em with honey to get a great holiday picture (”Hey what a great picture of the killer bees!”) should be sold to pay off the Great American Debt, and their kids can all grow up to be Congresspersons. Hmm. Maybe not.
Pete in Van Diemen's Land
April 17, 2005 at 4:20 pm
47Thanks, hedera. Docent = unpaid guide. That’s going in the VDL/US dictionary, along with biscuit, muffin, sweater, etc.
ani
April 17, 2005 at 6:33 pm
48so off the subject, yet so funny i couldn’t help but share.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
I, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by
artificial means.
Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of peckerhead
politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.
If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for piece of
chocolate, it should be presumed that I won’t do so ever again. When such a
determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending
physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.
Under no circumstances shall the members of the Legislature enact a special law
to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind
their own business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and
future of the millions of Americans who aren’t in a permanent coma and who
nonetheless may be in need of nourishment.
Under no circumstances shall any politicians butt into this case. I don’t care
how many fundamentalist votes they’re trying to scrounge for their run for the
Presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else’s
life and leave me alone to die in peace.
I couldn’t care less if a hundred religious zealots send emails to legislators
in which they pretend to care about me. I don’t know these people, and I
certainly haven’t authorized them to preach and/or crusade on my behalf. They
should mind their own business, too.
If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political
cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her
existence a living hell.
David
April 17, 2005 at 7:11 pm
49ani,
A priceless post. The clincher for me was “and if I fail to sit up and ask for a piece of chocolate…”
Would love to hear it as a poetry slam entry (maybe at one of Laura Bush’s White House poetry fetes?)
tess
April 17, 2005 at 10:52 pm
50David,
Laura Bush has poetry fetes? I can just imagine it now:
I sit alone,
I reek of gin,
My mind is numb,
My eyes are dim,
And I think back to my boyfriend then,
And realize I killed the wrong one.
David
April 18, 2005 at 12:23 am
51Tess,
Actually, she cancelled the poetry fete she had scheduled for just before the assault on Iraq - reported to have said, when she learned some poets were going to present anti-war poetry, that she didn’t know poets were political. Apparently she’s never heard of Walt Whitman. The most recent fete, which did occur, was for writers like Tom Wolfe. Seems W is taken with Wolfe’s latest book.
ani,
Where did TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN come from?
ani
April 18, 2005 at 1:55 am
52David,
My mom found it on another blog and sent it to me, I’ll try to find out where she saw it.
ani
April 18, 2005 at 7:13 am
53David,
I giess my mom’s friend saw it on a religious site.
Here’s the link -
http://www.free4um.com/SolaFide/viewtopic.php?t=9
Hope that helps.
Anneeka
Johnnyboy
April 18, 2005 at 9:41 am
54W, taken with a… book ?
Taken with Tom Wolfe, perhaps. I still shudder with disgust remembering TW’s piece in Harper’s in 2000, blathering in his inimitably logorrheic way about how things were just so hunky-dorey in the ol’ US of A. About as incredibly blind as Fukuyama’s “End of history”. And these people pass for intellectuals…
Thompson
April 18, 2005 at 11:12 am
55Didn’t Tom Wolfe’s latest book win the “Bad Sex in Literature” award this past year? Or am I thinking of someone else?
David
April 18, 2005 at 11:47 am
56Note the singular - a book. He is also reported to have read one book on the history of the heathen Middle and Eastward East. Apparently someone suggests one book on a topic of interest that will likely be acceptable to his perspective, and then that one book defines his worldview regarding that topic. But I also gather this business of reading books is not allowed to get out of hand.
Thanks, Anneeka (cool name).