Oh, the Places You'll Go!
By Alan Mittelstaedt & Alfred Lee & Andy Klein & Anthony Miller & Rebecca Schoenkopf & Ron Garmon
Human Cargo By Andy Klein
Day Trip! By Rebecca Schoenkopf
California Coming HomeBy Rebecca Schoenkopf
Weekend Getaway By Ron Garmon
The Cruel Desert Wind Hoax By Alan Mittelstaedt
No, Don’t Take the Train! By Alfred Lee
When That Train Rumbles Through By Anthony Miller
Did you know that Hitler managed to give every German man, woman and child a yearly vacation at either the mountains or the sea?
Give a man two weeks’ R&R, and you can get away with just about anything.
Did you know in Norway, even the welfare mothers get paid vacations? And that if you are a farmer, the gubmint (except in Norway, I think it’s pronounced gahoovhhamarnaheht) will send someone out to milk your cows? Yeah, that’s what happens when you’re sitting on a lovely pool of beautiful crude but make your own wind power instead so you can sell your oil to assholes like us. Also? I don’t think Norway spends $493 billion a year on defense (not counting veterans’ benefits; nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production; and Iraq) – and in fact, I know they don’t, because we are spending as much as the rest of the world combined.
So what does that have to do with your vacation? Quite a bit, actually, because thanks to the flabbergasting sleight-of-hand that’s been perpetrated by el Prez, you can’t go anywhere this year. Why? Because we done spent all our money and are having a depression, that’s why, and all the $150 billion stimulus bills in the world are only going to make the Wal-Mart heirs $150 billion richer. Also? You don’t have a job. So at least it’s like you’re on a permanent vacation!
But perhaps you are one of the precious few who do have jobs, and who do get two weeks off, and you would like to spend the last of your cute American money while it still has something akin to a monetary value and before it takes a wheelbarrow of greenbacks to buy an egg. So whatcha gonna do? Road trip? You’re as adorable as the American dollar. Didn’t you know oil’s gonna go to $200 a barrel? And that we’re not even at what any college Naderite can tell you is Peak? That means each gallon of gas in the tank of your GMC Yukon (you stud!) is gonna run you a cool $7.50.
Guess what? It should.
Are you going to fly? Sure, if there’s an airline left.
So what should you really (really) do? Take the train, baby. Take the train.
Now, the train’s not cheap either, unless you get Amtrak’s North America Rail Pass, which is 30 consecutive days of unlimited travel for under a thousand bucks (hitch: to get that fare, you must at some point go to Canada, where they will hold their sides in laughter at your hilarious money; payback, indeed is a bitch). Or you could get seven days in California for $159, now that I look it up on the Internet, which actually is completely awesome.
I take it back. The train IS cheap! The only thing cheaper is your mom or the bus, and anybody who’s ever seen a movie or Six Feet Under knows that buses are the modern metaphorical equivalent of the boat on the River Styx, i.e., buses = death, what with the way the camera always watches you from across the road while you’re sitting at the bus bench, and after the bus pulls away you are gone (sorry, but Luke Wilson totally died in The Royal Tenenbaums, just like Jim Carrey did in The Truman Show, which you probably didn’t know either, except his version of the boat on the River Styx was actually a boat, but whatever, he’s still dead and also schizophrenic); yes, the bus is death, while everyone who’s ever seen a movie knows too that the train is sex, what with all the tunnels and stuff, and we are not to do as the French do and conflate the two, so which do you pick, sex or death? Take it easy, Michael Hutchence: not both.
Take the train, is all we’re saying. And we’ll see you in two weeks.
Published: 05/14/2008
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
Other Stories by Alan Mittelstaedt
Other Stories by Alfred Lee
Other Stories by Andy Klein
Other Stories by Anthony Miller
Other Stories by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Other Stories by Ron Garmon
Related Articles
Comments
Wow, you're so right - and to think that all along everyone's been thinking Hitler was this bad, inconsiderate dude!
The train! The train!
The BEST WAY TO TRAVEL!
Funny (as usual) and to the point (also, as usual.)
I am really, really, really, really glad you are the editor.