So many of the world’s problems could be solved if there existed some sort of geopolitical Craig’s List. This came up yesterday: Kim Jong Il is frustrated right now. We know he wants nuclear weapons. We can’t let him have them. But that’s not the end of story. We know that he also likes kidnapping starlets. Well it just so happens we have a starlet named Paris Hilton whom we’d love to have kidnapped from us. Problem solved. Everyone’s happy. (Credit to Maximum Bob for this helpful piece of matchmaking.)
Likewise, we’ve got 450 detainees in Guantanamo Bay and we don’t know what to do with them. Military tribunals are now out of the question, but we don’t want or have to let them go. But they’re getting increasingly restless. (Who can blame them? You couldn’t pay me to vacation in Cuba in the summer.) What do we do with them?
Well, according to a report from TMZ.com, Candy Spelling, widow of Aaron, is putting the famous Spelling mansion on the block for a cool $150 million. The 56,000 square foot house includes a doll museum, a whole wing for servants, a 6,000-sq.-ft. guest house, a greenhouse, 12 fountains and a room just for gift wrapping.
Sounds like the perfect place for 450 jihadist beach bums. Convert the gift wrapping room into a prayer room. (Prayer is about giving thanks, right?) Make a point of not having the detainees stay in the servants’ quarters. Make sure, of course, that none of the dolls looks at all like Mohammed.
By the time the War on Terror is over (here’s hoping it doesn’t run into syndication) the detainees will be so Americanized they won’t be a threat. How could they be? The place has a gazebo. Anyone who’s seen The Sound of Music knows the civilizing influence of a gazebo. (Okay, I know the Von Trapps were Austrian and Rolf was a Nazi. Plus that scene does kind of suck. But you get the idea.)
The land itself is only 6 acres. The Pentagon could surely pull it together and create a cage to cover the property. (Any geometry teacher readers out there? What would the dimensions of the cage be?) And if anyone gets out of line – like, say, one of the Afghan detainees uses the greenhouse to cultivate opium poppy plants for smack – well there are two Olympic-size swimming pools. Anyone for waterboarding? (The old-fashioned kind – where you actually got dipped into a pool…)
Who the hell else is going to buy the place?
Fanny Roborat
21 comments
Steve
July 6, 2006 at 7:43 am
1This is probably (no, definitely) the wrong place to do this but I don’t see any other place for it, so here goes, with all apologies for being off topic taken as read.
The new design of this blog is a Great Leap Backward. The type style is difficult to read. owing both to the default size and the poor contrast of the grey-on-white (whichever graphic designer came up with that ought to be forced to pay for my new reading glasses), the layout is cluttered, and the breaking of long posts to a “jump page”. It’s as bad as the Puffington Host and, believe me, that’s almost completely unreadable.
The previous layout was vastly better. Please, Adam, bring back the old design.
On the positive side, I’m delighted to see the new co-bloggers. I, of course, “know” (in the secular sense) Mo Rocca (though I’ve always thought his last name should end in an “o” instead of an “a“) from WWDTM and enjoy his incisive wit almost as much as Adam’s (it’s not you, Mo. It’s just me). And. of course, FA still has the best comments interface in the entire blogsphere — the on-the-fly preview ought to be mandatory on every site.
Murray
July 6, 2006 at 7:54 am
2Mo, looks like you solved the problem.
Paris to Pyongyang, Gitmo to Spellingland.
I think a geodesic dome would work well, it would warm things up so that the detainees who are now so familiar with the tropical sun won’t get cold, and maybe we could do some more Biosphere III experiments.
(Sorry to hijack this thread so quickly)
Latest news on Felberpalooza
Yes it is still on, bigger and better than ever!
Check out the latest at http://www.grouseland.com/72hours.htm
Seattle Tammy has offered to help with artwork.
Those looking to book flights should fly into BWI and we will set up a clearing house to shuttle folks to Grouseland. People can gather at my house in Columbia (20 minutes from the airport) waiting for a ride up here. You are free to rent a car but some might like to car pool and share the expense.
Stay tooned.
John Murphy
July 6, 2006 at 8:13 am
3One Acre equals 43,560 square feet.
Six Acres equals 261,360 square feet.
That is roughly the Equivalent of six American Foot ball fields minus the end zones.
I think I heard Dick Cheney’s last annually salary at Halabertan was around 28 mill.
I say we let Big Dick pay for the fence.
tim
July 6, 2006 at 9:11 am
4John,
Mo said we want to build a cage, kind of like a geodesic dome, so we need to calculate the area of half a sphere covering the whole property. Since we don’t know the dimensions of length or width, I’m going to assume that the property is actually a circle 6 acres in area.
6 acres does indeed come out to 261,360 sq. ft.
Assuming this is in the shape of a circle, that’s a radius of about 288 and a half feet. (Area of a circle = pi * r^2, so r = sq rt(A / pi ) )
To build a half-sphere cage over that, you need about 522,720 sq. ft. of cage material. (Area of a sphere = 4 * pi * r^2, divide by two for half a sphere).
If it’s chain link fencing, that’ll run us about $1,000,000 if we can buy 6′ high fencing at $15 per lineal foot, or $5,000,000 if we contract it out to Halliburton.
But check my math, since I’m only a chemical engineer. Also, I may have guessed low on the Halliburton markup.
cooper
July 6, 2006 at 9:35 am
5J.M. Good idea. Make Dick Cheney pay for it and let Halliburton, with their unfailing record of cost plus plus overruns, build it & bankrupt the sorry sum’bitch. That Gitmo hell hole was Cheney’s idea of a good time anyway. He should pay.
Off target, but - What we need is a very timely post concerning exactly what laws Bush has violated when he lost his Gitmo case before the Supreme Court. Surely these tramplings of the Constitution can be classified as High Crimes. Don’t tell me a blowjob is the only thing that will get the impeachment ball rolling these days. I’m growing impatient! Let’s get on with the lynching, already!
Mary
July 6, 2006 at 9:47 am
6cooper- want to go the pitchfork and torches route? Chenney can play the monster and W Dr. F. I think both of them should be lynched.
As to Mo’s idea… If they can syndicated ala “Big Brother” ( there’s some irony for you), it just might pay for itself.
John Murphy
July 6, 2006 at 9:56 am
7Tim,
Well done with the above calculations. You are correct Mo did suggest a geodesic dome. My background is in agriculture, specifically, with shit. I am going to leave the design of the Camp Spelling to others and I will go back to my God given talent of spotting shit, moving shit, giving shit, and my personal favorite, pointing out that Dick Cheney is a very large piece of shit.
Cooper that is a great comment about the “getting the Impeachment ball rolling”
Let’s see how the comparison works.
Personal Liberties vs. Fellatio
I think there are a lot of us that could use both of those.
And Dick, if by chance you are reading this… In the words of Robyn Williams from “Good Morning Viet Nam”
“You are in more dire need of a blowjob than any white man in history.”
Happy day all
ice weasel
July 6, 2006 at 11:00 am
8“Who the hell else is going to buy the place?”
Since the lay estate now goes to the heirs and cannot be used to repay the thousands who lost everything, maybe Linda Lay might be interested.
You know, it’s that or she’s out on the streets, being a poor widow and all.
Ann
July 6, 2006 at 11:55 am
9Steve, I reluctantly admit that I agree with you. I don’t like this new layout, especially the jumps. I get confused about where I am. (This happens in the real world, too.)
siobhan
July 6, 2006 at 1:24 pm
10Weasel, according to all I’ve heard/read, the Lay estate is still on the hook for any civil suits. Given that the burden of proof is lower in civil courts, and that all of Lay’s testimony from the criminal trial can be used as evidence in the civil suit, there’s still hope that some justice may be done.
Saywhat
July 6, 2006 at 1:47 pm
11I like the new layout a lot. The old one was uglier than a pug with psoriasis. This one is clean and fresh and easy to read. Just putting my two cents in as the critics always bleat louder than happy customers.
Single H. Monad
July 6, 2006 at 2:01 pm
12tim, John,
I can only do simple math: 450 = 9 x 50.
Fifty teams…, all that time in Cuba…, should make one heckofa a baseball league. I say it’s time for a World Series War on Terror.
-Monad
Mr_Blog
July 6, 2006 at 3:20 pm
13Mo,
Why are you singling out Paris Hilton? There are lots of boring over-exposed under-talented starlets who could help broaden the North Korean gene pool, pick up the latest issue of Maxim and tell me I’m wrong.
tess
July 6, 2006 at 3:37 pm
14Suddenly I have visions of detainees with whiffle ball bats destroying “precious moments” figurines from Mrs. Spelling’s personal collection (not that I know that she does, but if she has a room just for gift wrapping . . .).
Dale
July 6, 2006 at 5:17 pm
15Mo, I expected a more veterinary solution from you. Do you have any inside scoops on Kim Jong Il’s pets (and how many minutes it will take before one of them devours that piece of lint Paris Hilton keeps in her purse)?
Anyway, I would totally buy a sequel–All the Megalomaniacal Dicator’s Pets. (Perhaps what Orwell had in mind before he got distracted by the whole allegory thing?)
Just Jay
July 6, 2006 at 5:42 pm
16Off topic, but here goes. I read in the paper today that the Army 1st LT who refused to return to Iraq is being charged with, among other things, “speaking contempuously of the president.” Good thing Army rules don’t apply here. Makes we wonder, if that rule had been rigorously enforced during the Clinton administration how many of the current Pentagon residents would have found themselves in Leavenworth? Also makes me think that if any president ever deserved to be spoken of contempuously the Yellow Rose is certainly the one.
Cheers
Jill
July 6, 2006 at 8:12 pm
17Will Paris get to take Tinkerbell with her?
cooper
July 7, 2006 at 6:40 pm
18Prayer is about giving thanks, right?
Well, yes, maybe - when it was first conceived, Mo. But if you’ve watched the TV evangelists, it’s morphed into more of a begging for shit deal. “Heal our pain!” “Give me his 72 virgins; he wouldn’t know what to do with them!” “Lift our burdens!” “Smite our foes!” “Kill the infidels!” “Engorge our coffers!” “Buy me a Mercedes Benz!” Like that.
hedera
July 7, 2006 at 8:24 pm
19Or in the immortal words of Janis Joplin: “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me A Mercedes-Benz? My friends all have Porsches, and I must make amends…”
Pete IVDL
July 8, 2006 at 8:19 am
20I’d hate to be one of them 72 virgins… They mustn’t be able to walk anymore, let alone take a pee! Assuming of course, that in Eternal Paradise you acually need to pee. And also assuming that jihaadis even look at the virgins when they can swap suicide notes with their buddies… Sorry, TtT as usual… (Tangential to Topic)
David
July 8, 2006 at 6:10 pm
21Wow! Speaking contemptuously of the president is a chargeable offense in the military. Sieg fucking heil, and Bushland uber alles.