So here I am, it’s quarter to eight and I’ve been awake for an hour (not really your dream lifestyle for a writer: where’s my hot stone massage and my long lazy mornings? That’s what I want to know) and the first thing I see checking out teh interwebnology reports is that Your Neighbourhood Librarian has two things I absolutely want to steal.
So I’m gonna. Because that’s teh interweb, but also because they are too fabulous to leave alone.
The first one is a toy. I like toys. Good toys are the best thing ever. They make bridges between adults and kids and actually between people from around the world. If only the Soviets and NATO could have had a slinky-conference, the Cold War would have been so much shorter:
Hey! Reagan! Look, Tovaritch, I just got it all the way down the twenty seven flights of stairs at the UN!
That’s nothing, Rooskie, Kissenger just got his to go around a corner!
Really? If I give you Cuba, will you show me how?
Of course!
So this one is a web toy. It is most excellent. You need the sound on, though.
But you know what I love, maybe even more than little happyface monsters shooting flowers out of their heads and making electropop noises against a sixties sound track? And yes, I know, it’s hard to imagine anything more awesome than that, but try.
I love this:
Forbes lists hundreds of billionaires. Let’s cold-call ‘em. “Hey you! Don’t walk away – clean that up!” I’ll start dialling – I don’t mind. Who’s with me?
ZOMG. Yes, yes, yes. Let’s do that.
Before all of you geoeconomical realists come in and spoil the party with your ‘oooh, no, that would jeopardise the future of the capitalist system’, let’s just wallow in the gorgeousness of the idea.
There are twenty two people on that list with more than twenty billion dollars. Is there really anything on Earth that you can buy with twenty billion that you can’t buy with ten? I mean, on a personal level. Sure, countries, space programmes, AIDS vaccines, economic bailouts… but I mean, how many boxes of cornflakes can one person actually eat?
Now, granted, if I had that kind of money, I’d be building myself all kinds of insane technological stuff. I’d buy a small nation and do illicit science experiments, make myself a giant all-terrain robot with internal life support so I could explore the oceans and eventually inhabit the shell when my own body was a helpless husk.
Or maybe I’d just give a ton of it to charity, I have no idea. The point is, this is global level cash. Do you really need another jet? Another four hundred room house? Not so much.
And the idea of saying: hey, you! This is your mess. Sort it out. We’ll be over here when you’re done.
I love that. And there’s an element of justice in it, too.
