Shalampax Speaks

The State of California’s budget crisis is over, somewhat.

The state has been paying with IOUs. I guess that’s why they need a former muscle-building terminator as governor. In case anybody complains about the IOUs, he can explain things to those girly-men whiners, if you get my drift.

The state now has a budget and the money should soon start flowing (or is that trickling?) again. Nonetheless, there are still big problems in California. The state had to make big cuts to a number of programs, including in the vital areas of health and education. And, even then, California still has to borrow a couple of billion dollars to close the budget gap.

The people of Shalampax, on the other hand, are rolling in cash thanks to revenue from our cult religion and spam companies. Therein lies the solution to California’s fiscal problems.

Shalampax is a painfully overcrowded nation. With 4,242 people packed onto a tiny speck of an island, we all feel terribly cramped. I think you see where this is going.

A group of our cult religion and spam executives have gotten together and proposed to buy some of California to add to the existing Shalampaxian territory. They aren’t thinking of the whole state, maybe just Catalina Island, which is a little south and west of Los Angeles.

At 22 miles long and 8 miles wide, Catalina Island would seem luxuriously large to us Shalampaxians. If our women weren’t so adamantly opposed to having children, we’d consider expanding the population of our country if we could get Catalina Island.

Here’s the good part: The executives proposing the deal tell me that they could pay full market value—and maybe a little extra as an added incentive—in cash; no IOUs, no mortgages. That should solve the state’s budget problems for at least a couple of years.

Of course, because we are exceptionally xenophobic, we would require vacant possession of the island. And because we find American laws far too stifling for our business sector, Catalina Island would have to secede from the union. Is that a problem?

I checked and, according to the 2000 census, there were 3,696 people living on Catalina Island when the census was taken. Considering there are 4,242 Shalampaxians now living on an island a small fraction of the size of Catalina Island, the Catalina Islanders should have no problem finding somewhere else to live.

What do you think? Do you think the deal will fly?

And sorry, before you ask, no, we would not be willing to take Sarah Palin as part of the deal.

As regular readers know well, we Shalampaxians are a tad xenophobic. While the feeling among Shalampaxians is generally, “loaf and let live,” we have a nasty habit of eating any outsiders who somehow manage to land on our island.

We are not the only people who have ever practiced cannibalism. However, I’ve done some research and found that, due to the exceptionally small size of our island, there are more people per square foot here who have at one time or another practiced cannibalism than there have been anywhere else on earth at any time in the history of the planet.

This factoid astounded me. Proud of our island nation’s uniqueness, I applied to have our cannibalistic achievement listed in the Guinness World Records.

So far, I’ve been frustrated in this objective. It seems that the Guinness people won’t just take my word for it. They insist on verifying our record themselves before officially including it in their book and on their Web site. Unfortunately, Guinness has not been able to convince any of its staff to venture out to our island to certify our cannibalism record. Go figure.

On Friday, Toiletoverflowing will hold another session in his much-ignored, intermittently scheduled philosophy lecture series. The topic for this Friday’s lecture is epistemology, which is the study of knowledge and justified belief.

Toiletoverflowing will focus on the question, is knowledge truly knowable or does what we call “knowledge” consist of merely a set of beliefs that we have come to accept as justified? Furthermore, are those justifications based on verifiable, reproducible, tangible facts external to us or have the justifications been built and accepted solely within our minds? In other words, is knowledge and our perception of truth real or only an illusion?

Unlike was the case before his last talk, I have not been able to obtain a copy of Toiletoverflowing’s notes for this week’s lecture, so I can’t comment on its merits. However, I expect it to be one of his shorter philosophy talks as it is widely known that Toiletoverflowing believes that all knowledge, including the knowledge of whether knowledge is knowable, is unknowable. The impossibility of knowing knowledge, if that is the case, raises the question of why he bothers to give lectures at all, but never mind.

Toiletoverflowing does not yet have a room booked for this week’s lecture. However, it will not be the room he had last time, 2B, as it is being used on Friday for the eighth annual Moldyjellybean memorial service. Moldyjellybean isn’t yet dead, but the attendees keep hoping.

I can’t yet tell you what room Toiletoverflowing’s lecture will be in, but if you are saying to yourself, “2B or not 2B, that is the question,” I can definitely say that, because of the Moldyjellybean memorial service, it’s not 2B.

I believe refreshments will be served at the lecture, but now that I think about it, I don’t truly know that they will be served.

At 3:00 p.m. today, in celebration of Shalampax’s National Military Day, all soldiers in the Shalampax army will ceremonially march in full dress uniform along the third floor’s north hallway. Guns will not be carried as the army doesn’t own any.

The parade will end in the third-floor pub. There, Emptybeerbottle, the only soldier in the Shalampaxian army, will attempt to recruit someone to replace her so she can, in her words, “finally get the hell out of this fucking, joke of an army.”

The best marketing practices do not try to convince people that they need something they don’t need. Rather, the classic marketing model dictates that marketers endeavor to discover gaps in the market—goods, services and/or price points that people need and want, but can’t currently get—and then find ways to fill those gaps.

Shalampaxians typically ignore the marketing model and simply rely on petty—and sometimes not so petty—larceny and deception to fill their larders with lucre, glorious lucre. Emptychampagnebottle has come up with what promises to be a very lucrative way to adhere to the textbook marketing model, without forsaking Shalampaxian business traditions.

Here’s the basis of his idea: Many less-than-scrupulous people have, over the years, evaded taxes in their home countries by concealing their money in tax havens that offer strict bank secrecy.

Because of strong pressure, including the threat of serious economic sanctions, from the United States and other countries, many tax havens have changed the laws that formerly allowed their banks to keep information about their customers’ funds from the prying eyes of foreign governments. As a result, the opportunities for the rich to hide their wealth safely and securely from their government’s tax authorities are dwindling precipitously.

Appalling though it may seem, if the current trend continues, there might come a time when prosperous people will have little choice but to pay the full taxes owing under the tax system under which they live. Of course, this is making many of them quite uneasy and upset. They are desperately seeking a new place to hide their money. Emptychampagnebottle plans to reap enormous profits by filling this looming void in the financial marketplace.

Emptychampagnebottle has founded the First Covert Bank of Shalampax.

As you may know, Shalampax has no taxes as such. When the government needs money, its Funds Facilitator goes out and, literally, picks the pockets of Shalampaxians until the required funds have been raised.

Because, under Emptychampagnebottle’s business plan, all of the First Covert Bank of Shalampax’s customers will live offshore, they will not be subject to this pocket-picking. They will, therefore, not need to pay any tax whatsoever to Shalampax. Thus, Shalampax qualifies as the ultimate tax haven.

To provide his customers with the confidentiality they need to evade taxes in their own countries, Emptychampagnebottle has convinced the Government of Shalampax to pass a law that not only allows the bank to refuse to give out information about its customers’ account, but makes it strictly illegal for it to do so.

To ensure absolute privacy, there will be no exceptions to this stringent confidentiality rule. The bank will not, for example, be allowed to tell its customers how much money is in their accounts.

And, because communications can be traced, the bank will also not be allowed to send any funds to its customers, even if those customers request withdrawals from their accounts. (These tight security controls notwithstanding, transfers required to move funds into customers’ accounts will be considered to be acceptable risks.)

All deposited funds will, therefore, remain in a customer’s account until the customer’s death.

Shalampax does not recognize wills filed outside of Shalampax. In addition, outsiders are not allowed to file wills in Shalampax.

On a customer’s death, the Shalampaxian law concerning the distribution of the estates of people who die intestate will apply. This law clearly states that, under these circumstances, possession is ten tenths of the law. Consequently, the bank will be allowed to keep all of the funds.

This ultimate in bank secrecy should appeal to affluent people who want an absolute assurance that their funds will be 100 percent sheltered from the tax authorities of their home country. Regularly falling for Ponzi schemes and other scams would be a another good indicator that someone is a member of Emptychampagnebottle’s target market.

Walking the education beat here at Shalampax Speaks has inspired me to start a Shalampax chapter of Mensa, the international organization for very intelligent people.

According to the membership rules of Mensa, only people with an IQ in the top two percent of the population can be members. In Shalampax, that pretty much means if you can spell Mensa and you are able to recognize the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground, you can join.

I qualify for Mensa and plan to become a member as soon as the chapter is established. Seeing as though I’m the one starting the local Mensa chapter, it would be hypocritical of me to not join when I have the chance. Shalampaxians are no strangers to hypocrisy, but I’m going to join nonetheless.

Considering Shalampaxians’ widespread disinterest in joining or doing anything, I expect to be the only member of the Shalampax chapter of Mensa. You might think that this would discourage me, but I welcome the solitude. Without any distractions, I’ll be able to spend my time at the Mensa meetings feeling up my breasts and masturbating, which is what passes for the height of intelligential activity in Shalampax.