Creative Accounting

Posted on 30 March 2024 by Larry Russwurm

It was just said in the news that Donald Trump’s wealth has reached 6.5 billion dollars for the first time ever. This is enough to put him in the top 500 wealthiest people list for the first time. Just don’t expect that figure to stay at 6.5 billion dollars for all circumstances.

For instance, if some socialist put in place a wealth tax in the US, expect that 6.5 billion dollars to inexplicably become 78 cents. If you asked him to transfer all that wealth to you for a dollar, he’d say he can’t because there are too many liens against all that he owns.

If he wanted to take a loan out against all that capital, expect his net worth to suddenly grow. Suddenly he would be worth 15 billion dollars which would receive excellent loan rates.

He wants to be known as one of the wealthiest people in the world. That strokes his ego and also suggests some business acumen. But he had to eat crow when he was ordered to pay a bond above 500 million dollars by the court. Imagine his embarrassment that he could not pay this amount.

Lucky for the Donald, the appeal court changed the amount to 175 million dollars. An amount he says he can pay.

By the way this comes as a merger is completed. An amount that had been disclosed to be worth 22.5 million dollars is now valued at 4 billion dollars. How something can become worth 175 times what it was originally I will leave for you to decide.

Notice how his worth picks up just before he is in a federal election? Suddenly his business acumen looks just fine. That 175 times multiplier looks almost wizardly. Instead of what I choose to call it. I call it creative accounting. After the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Donald slipped out of the top 500 richest people. But that might be too late.

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Plunder Wonder

Posted on 16 March 2024 by Larry Russwurm

A trickle of repatriation of artifacts of particular value has already started. That is where the museums of the west and in particular Europe give back artifacts that are known to be from other countries. Because of this we are also learning more about some artifacts.

Before returning a mummy now believed to be Rameses I, there were tests conducted on the artifact. The Atlanta museum that purchased it from a museum from Niagara Falls agreed to return it if the evidence agreed. It did, so Egypt got their Rameses I mummy.

There are many more valuable artifacts to be returned. Egypt wants its Rosetta Stone that was instrumental in translating the ancient hieroglyphs. Famously it has a long passage in Greek and the same passage in Egyptian hieroglyphs. When discovered, this led to the deciphering of a lot of Egypt’s past.

Greece wants its Parthenon Marbles back. These sculptures once stood on Athens’ acropolis and at the Parthenon. There is a deal to exhibit them in Greece. But many Greeks want full ownership. And eventually, I think they are going to get it. And stop calling them the Elgin Marbles, Britain. Elgin wasn’t responsible for any of the creating of these artifacts. Elgin just took them. He didn’t uncover them as they stood for millennia on the famous acropolis.

Which brings about the prime lesson of plundering from others. Just take silver and gold and other hard to claim valuables. Why? So you can melt them down and otherwise make them untraceable. With jewels you can cut them in pieces. Which may not be as valuable as they were originally, but this makes them very hard to trace back and have it repatriated from the injured country.

This is all on you, the west, if you wanted to preserve the culture for the future generations. You must realize by now that you were also preserving it for the future generations of the country that had it taken from. It’s time to give this easily traceable loot back. However I wouldn’t do this all willy-nilly. Make sure the looted country is going to preserve it as well as you would have.

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Things the Religious Might Be a Front For

Posted on 9 March 2024 by Larry Russwurm

Recently it was discovered that a Methodist pastor was dealing meth. Now we can’t all be in the glamourous business of drug dealing, but here are some other things the religious might be a front for.

If you guessed that a yogi might be a gateway religious icon for yoga, you would be very right. The words are very similar for a reason and lends credence(creedence?) to the rest of our examples.

Have you ever thought that Presbyterians were a bit too nosy for their own good? Well, they might be a front for the press of the world. Always searching for that big scoop that will make a big name for themselves.

Many protestant clergymen are known as ministers. This word is also a verb as to minister to the sick. These twisted people might rejoice in giving service. That’s sick, itself, needing more ministering.

Lutherans could be a front for luthiers, you know, those who make and fix stringed instruments. So if you hear a hoedown coming from behind a Lutheran church, you know what is what.

Monks could be a front for Monkees lovers. They do their awesome chanting until no one is within earshot, then break into, “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees, and people say we monkey around, but we’re too busy singing to put anybody down.”

The priesthood could mean any criminal priest. Maybe he sells meth like his methodist friend. Or perhaps he’s known for other crimes.

Rabbis could be a front for selling rabbits. Do you have a petting zoo? Go see the rabbi for your rabbits and other small, yet cute, mammal needs.

No matter how much you give to nuns, they are giving none away. After all, they are too busy being married to Jesus.

Anglicans may think they are a front for angels. But they are too busy eyeing the angles for their best advantage.

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Manufactured Battle of the Bands

Posted on 2 March 2024 by Larry Russwurm

I don’t know of any big feuds involving any bands at the moment. However that doesn’t mean I can’t manufacture one. So we at Many Rants, would like to introduce The Who- Dire Straits feud to the world.

A long, long time ago, when CDs were new, I noticed something quite striking with my friends and our stereos. If you kept the volume the same and put on any CD, then leaving the settings the same you put on a Who CD, the Who were always louder.

I personally had Who’s Next and Face Dances, but this was also true for the Who’s greatest hits and other studio albums. If you are having a battle of stereos with another person and you both have it on 10 and are about the same volume, put on The Who. It’s the equivalent of turning it up to 11 on your stereo.

So almost every other CD is recorded at the same volume. That is except Dire Straits. Now I’ve only ever had the Brothers in Arms CD by Dire Straits so I can’t vouch for their other albums. But Brothers in Arms is notably quieter than other CDs. So I figure that Dire Straits is the anti-Who.

If anyone has the equivalent albums on vinyl please tell me if The Who is louder and Dire Straits is quieter than other records.

Possibly Dire Straits’ biggest song was Money For Nothing. But the younger of you wouldn’t know this song because even on classic rock stations it’s not played any more. That’s because of three F-slurs in the song. “That little F-slur with the earring and the makeup, yeah buddy that’s his own hair, That little F-slur got his own jet airplane, that little F-slur is a millionaire.”

Pete Townshend, The Who’s guitarist, was known to have gay sex and some may even have called him the F-slur for this very reason. He has come out and said he was once pansexual. I could see Pete at least being offended by the Dire Straits lyrics to this song.

The Who is also known as the loudest rock band in the world. Guinness attests to this brag. Pete Townshend is partially deaf from all this loud music and never wore ear protection back in the day. He also has severe tinnitus from those years of playing rock music too loud.

Now I’ve never attended a Dire Straits concert, but suspect that singer/guitarist Mark Knopfler either keeps the music volume down or wears ear protection like earplugs when he is performing. Or both. After all he might still want to be able to hear his quiet Brothers in Arms album at home.

So, in short, Dire Straits and The Who have reasons to have a feud. Whether they will in actuality remains to be seen.

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Elon Musk Wants to Change the Name of Tesla

Posted on 24 February 2024 by Larry Russwurm

In what would be a surprise move, Elon Musk wishes to change the name of Tesla. He much prefers the name Ground X which would fit in with his stable of companies. This way his trio of companies would be known as Space X, X, and Ground X.

His shareholders may not have a stomach for such a change. Especially considering his change of Twitter to X has come along with a lowering of value of that company. Still, Musk marches to his own drummer and may force the change on his company.

After such a change, Musk may finally have an innocent reason to demand the giving of the xxx domain just for his stable of companies. Pornographers may be taken aback by this for awhile. But through force of character, determination and the exchange of lots of money, the xxx domain will become Musk’s at last.

Of course he will start with his innocent reasons. But he will start delving into pornography, first as a side hustle and as he makes more and more money, as the main thrust of his activities.

I believe Musk wishes to be the king of smut. And as such he would like to be addressed by the phrase, your royal smuttiness. Then finally he would be at the place he wants to be. A place where Prince Andrew would be jealous of his title.

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Summiting Everest

Posted on 17 February 2024 by Larry Russwurm

While driving one day on the plains of Asia, I was surprised to come up to a lineup of people. The finish of the line was over the horizon. They all had large packs with them, so you knew they were prepared.

Puzzled, I asked a man in line what it was that was so important to wait in this obviously long, slow moving line. He said simply, “We’re in line to summit Everest.”

“But we’re on the plains!” I shouted in disbelief.

“If you want to summit Everest, too, get to the back of the line,” he said.

I had more questions. “Are your packs full of food and water?”

“No, they’re full of mountaineering equipment.”

“How do you eat and drink and go to the bathroom?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I was daft. “Sherpas of course. Why, there is the provisions van now. You can see it near the horizon.”

Finally I asked him about the crux of the matter. “Why do you want to summit Everest so badly?”

“Well, a few years ago a speaker came to my town. He had summited Everest and had stories about it and made me want to do it, too.”

“You were inspired by his stories, then?”

“No. I was inspired by the way he was lording it over everyone else, I wanted to join him and do that also.”

Now that I knew his rationale I had something to suggest to him. “Even if you do this, there will be people who can still lord it over you. The seven summits people for instance.”

“You mean climbing the highest peaks on 7 continents? Well this is number 1. I could do the rest after this.”

“Then there are the 2nd highest peaks on 7 continents club, too.”

“Well I’m not ridiculous. Besides I have my own plan. I just may be able to lord it over everyone.”

Unsure of what he was talking about I asked, “I’d like to hear this plan.”

“You’re sure you’re not going to summit Everest?”

“Oh I’m sure.”

“Well let me whisper this in your ear.”

He whispered, “Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world. It’s just that most of it is under water. I need one of those tough round submersibles but mine will have more glass. I’ll submerge to the base of Mauna Kea and roll it like a hamster in their hamster balls, all the way up to the ocean surface. Then I will emerge and climb the rest of the mountain. I’ll be the first and will possibly be knighted. Then I can literally lord it over almost anyone!”

He was done and pulled away from me. “Good plan,” I said.

I got back to my car and said, “I guess all you people are dying to climb Everest so have at it.”

I tried to get past the line in my car but it kept going. Finally I took a right and the line became just a memory.

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The Enhanced Games

Posted on 10 February 2024 by Larry Russwurm

The Enhanced Games might actually get off the ground and offer a place where athletes can use steroids and other scientific enhancements while competing. They hope to get the “real” world records. And if you care to say that this is immoral, they have prepared answers for you.

The Olympic Games are a real money maker. But the “amateur” athletes competing don’t make enough to live on and thus have to have other income. They plan to change that. I hate to say it, but they may have a point.

Still, I won’t give it a firm okay unless I hear that steroids are not shortening the lives of the athletes. I’m afraid that definitive studies are only going to come about because of the Enhanced Games. These athletes are going to be guinea pigs in this instance.

There are also known side effects that most would find troubling. Like a higher risk of torn tendons for example. There are side effects that may shorten the lives of users. Like high blood pressure, increased bad cholesterol, lowered good cholesterol and problems with the heart.

And ‘roid rage is real. This side effect could get stars in, say, a track event likely to fight at the slightest provocation. This could be used by other competitors. You know, a computer generated voice that sounds like the second place athlete saying something terribly insulting about the first place athlete causing a disqualifying fight that the third place athlete’s accomplices started.

Ideally, the Enhanced Games would go long into the future. So the successful male athletes may gain valuable rights to have a third or fourth child, which would be banned in the rest of society. However this may be impossible with long time steroid use making them infertile.

The Enhanced Games are claiming to be a home for all athletes. A few years ago Oscar Pistorius won a medal even though he was a double amputee running on “blades”. This blade runner was thought in some circles to have an unfair advantage. Whether true or not, special limb and other replacements will soon be able to have improvements on the normal body parts. These bionics might tempt people to rid themselves of their original body parts just so they can become athletes in the enhanced games.

I expect that eventually the Enhanced games would split from the bionic games. After all, it would seem like cheating if the bionic legs could run at 50 miles per hour. Of course the steroid users would call the bionic people cheaters.

So I suspect there will be 3 leagues. The Olympic Games, The Enhanced Games and the Bionic Games.

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45 Year Old, Pristine O-Pee-Chee Gum Found

Posted on 3 February 2024 by Larry Russwurm

768 pieces of O-Pee-Chee gum was found still in its original packaging from 1979. There is one case of 16 boxes with 48 sealed packages. There has been much talk of keeping the case pristine, so too, the boxes and each package. I say no to this when valuable experiments could be done to the gum. Maybe not 768 experiments, but a few.

For those of you who don’t know, a stick of O-Pee-Chee gum was inserted inside a package with 14 hockey cards. This semi-miraculous gum would last for about a year, or at least all the way through the hockey season. But can it last a full 45 years after having been made? That is the delightful science experiment we can decide once and for all. Personally I believe that not only is it possible, it will taste as fresh as it did 45 years ago.

They are auctioning off the case. I believe science money would be well spent buying the case. Unfortunately, sport card collectors are speculating that there should be 25 to 30 Wayne Gretzky rookie cards in this case. This will likely drive up the price. Still, I believe science will be able to outbid the collectors. After all, guaranteed science out weighs what amounts to gambling on the Wayne Gretzky rookie cards. Indeed, there might be zero of these in the entire case.

This is how I fantasize the science would be done. First of all, just one stick of gum would be opened. A machine would measure the pollutants in the air released, which comes from London, Ontario’s past which was much more polluted.

Then we could rifle through the package and retrieve the O-Pee-Chee gum. Next an electronic sniffer would sniff the gum. But if I was one of the scientists, I would use my own sniffer. I imagine 45 year old O-Pee-Chee gum smells a lot like the gum did in its first year.

We wouldn’t taste the gum right away because it might be dangerous. Some of the gum may have broken down into poisons. Instead we would find out most of what it was made out of by such things as spectroscopy and using a mass spectrometer, etc.

If the gum passes these tests, it would finally be time to test the gum on a grad student. They might still die but that is the risk that senior scientists are willing to take. If they respond by going “Yuk, this is gross” then we know that O-Pee-Chee gum isn’t still good after 45 years. If they go, “Meh, let me see some reading material while I chew on this,” and then proceed to read through the opened hockey cards, then you know it has its original flavour. If they go “Yum, this is wonderful” then you know they have smoked some weed just a few minutes earlier.

Assuming the grad student went “Meh”, it is now the senior scientists’ chance to also try the gum. Does the taste take them back to their youth when they collected these cards and of course ate the gum? I suspect it will. Why? Because sugar is a great preservative and I think 45 years is nothing for something with as much sugar as O-Pee-Chee gum.

Then, if the senior scientists must, they will search through the opened cards for a Wayne Gretzky rookie card. Perhaps they can recover the cost of this experiment.

Then they will preserve the rest of the boxes and packages for 45 years in the future where they will, once again test the gum. It is after all important to find out how long O-Pee-Chee gum can last. It could be used on very long space voyages.

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Shortening Doctor Titles

Posted on 27 January 2024 by Larry Russwurm

Have you ever noticed that the English version of words is generally shorter? I don’t know about all languages but by comparison with French, the English version is usually shorter than the same thing stated in French.

This is not by accident. English works at it. Whether it be with acronyms or other shortening methods, English speakers seem to thrive on brevity. Lately I have seen a commercial with Jennifer Garner which tries to do this with a doctor’s title. They blatantly use the word derm for meaning dermatologist.

I guess that’s it. We’re doing it now. We’re officially shortening doctor’s long, long titles. And bonus points will be given if we succeed in making the titles only one syllable long.

How about endocronologist? Let’s shorten that title to end. As in, “I am going to meet my end, today.” Why pretty soon a whole bunch of people in Canada will have suggested you call 988 otherwise known as the suicide prevention line. In order to not waste the time of such a valuable resource as 988, perhaps we can use the short form endo for an endocronologist.

How about anesthesiologist? We could try shortening it to the first syllable so it would be an. But this sounds like an indefinite article or a woman’s name. So how about anes? Well what would it be if your anes and proctologist consulted? Sounds like a colonoscopy! Anes unfortunately sounds like something else. So how about thesi? I had a consult with my thesi today. Much better.

So how about that proctologist? Proc might be thought of as being short for proclamation. And you really don’t want your results and procedures read out like a proclamation. Perhaps prockey could be used as the shortened version. But that name reminds us of a game being played. A hard hitting, violent game perhaps isn’t what you want to think of as happening down there. Maybe proctologist should remain untouched by our shortening.

Then there’s oncologist. There I support the one syllable shortening to onc. Even though an ankh is pronounced the same. Oncologists are cancer doctors and a cancer diagnosis can mean death. But the ankh is a symbol that means life. Lately this battle between life and death often means more life after the cancer diagnosis. That is the trend. So life isn’t a bad symbol for the oncologist.

These are just some specialties I’m familiar with. The list of doctor specialties is, I believe well over 30. Have fun shortening their specialties yourself. Remember the English language will be proud of you.

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Zebras

Posted on 20 January 2024 by Larry Russwurm

Referees wear vertically striped outfits that are black and white. Not surprisingly they get called zebras by many. But despite the haranguing referees get, they are considered to be upstanding citizens with good opinions on the match or game they ref. They are an authority figure.

For the longest time, prisoners wore horizontally striped outfits that were black and white. I think they were given such clothing in an effort to stand out from the crowd. If they escaped their prison they could easily be spotted before they managed to change clothes. As prisoners, they were largely looked down on by the general public.

What is it about black and white stripes that denotes the position in society so easily? Could it be that vertical stripes are slimming and therefore of a higher standing? Horizontal stripes make someone look broader and does that denote lower standing?

Does the black and white part, mean that they see things in black and white? Maybe they make the mistake of seeing everything as good or evil, right or wrong. I don’t know because I didn’t come up with this design.

But I do think that the middle class could be denoted by black and white stripes on a 45 degree angle. If we let someone dress up like that, though, I bet one of the first comments would be, “You’re crooked!” since crooked also refers to the criminal, this design doesn’t make the wearer an average, non-criminal, society member.

The only way to denote the ordinary citizen that I can see, is to use zigzagging patterns, sometimes known as saw-tooth wave patterns. But should they zigzag horizontally or vertically?

If the vertical stripes is upper class, then the horizontal stripes would mean lower class. Perhaps the horizontal saw-tooth wave pattern could denote lower middle class. Charlie Brown has a yellow and black shirt with this pattern. Does that mean he was lower middle class? Then the vertical saw-tooth wave pattern could denote upper middle class. We could all display our class with our clothing. Doesn’t that sound icky.

If you don’t want to do this might I recommend any clothing other than black and white stripes.

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