After all of the stimulus payments, the government needed a way to cut costs while still providing affordable healthcare during a pandemic. The Affordable Salutary Support (ASS) Act was the solution. Young men could get the coverage they needed… at the cost of their clothes.
The government got the proceeds from the sale of the clothes, and they also set up a website that allowed the public to view photos of ASS participants for a fee. The program made a significant profit in the first year alone.
It was determined that the coronavirus lives on fabric far longer than any other surface. In order to save the economy from collapse, the government made a hard decision: businesses could reopen, but workers would not be permitted to wear clothing.
Women were exempt from the rule, since forced nudity was considered a safety risk. Men, however, were permitted only an overcoat to wear outdoors if they were cold - otherwise they were to remain naked at all times.
Here we see a group of men waiting for the morning train on the first day of this new policy. While they’re happy to be returning to their jobs, they’re less thrilled with the exposure. Everyone they know at work is going to see them naked, and they won’t even get the satisfaction of seeing their female coworkers in the altogether.
When the Bureau for the Acquisition of Remaining Educational Debt (BARED) was formed, Tommy got nervous about his $105,000 of student loan debt. He knew it would be an awkward meeting when they asked him to come in. He didn’t know it would be this awkward though.
After arriving he was told to surrender his clothes and wait in the corner for a case manager to call him. He knew he shouldn’t argue, but he did wonder how long this would take. And he had no idea what would come next.
Poor Tommy’s going to be in for a surprise when the Bureau informs him his clothes will be forfeited until he can repay his debt. Only $105k and 5 years of complete nudity to go!
It was in this moment that he knew his political career was over. As he often did, he was drinking with his cronies at his private beach estate, and he was somehow persuaded into skinny dipping. Everything was fine until he saw all the paparazzi recording him from behind the bushes. The following day, the news was full of his nude pictures in the beach and reports exposing his corrupt acts with his cronies. This humiliating exposition followed him everywhere, especially in the next election. Insults about the size of his manhood were chanted in almost all his campaign, forcing him to withdraw from the elections in shame.
Printed three years before A Modest Proposal (a more obvious satire) Gulliver’s Travels can be read as a harmless children’s story. As with Animal Farm, however, in the hands of a politically-aware adult, it becomes something dangerous: an instrument of thought.
Yeah. That’s very clever. What’s it about?
It’s a record of travels to exotic lands. There are four parts to the book. By far the most well-known is the section dealing with the tiny people called Lilliputians, but there are other sections dealing with his travel to a land of giants, a land of wizards and scientists, and lastly to a land ruled by horses who consider their Yahoo subjects as ignorant peasants.
These Yahoos bear more than a passing resemblance to humans. A full understanding of Gulliver’s Travels would require a brief explanation of 18th-century English politics.
There is no way. No.
Don’t worry. The broad themes of greed, pride and inveterate political stupidity will be familiar to all. Although if you’ve read Game of Thrones and you’re put off by having to keep a bunch of political stuff in your head in order to understand the text, you should present yourself to the relevant authorities at first light.
What should I say to make people think I’ve read it?
“Political satire is always relevant.”
What should I avoid saying when trying to convince people I’ve read it?
Anything about the yahoo website.
Should I actually read it?
Yes. It’s a lot of fun and there’s a certain kick out of “getting” the sharper jokes.
Some particularly ridiculous moments from my new “Hello NSA” music video. I picked some because I was proud of the wordplay and others because there were jumper cables on my nipples. I’ll leave you to sort out which is which.
“'Forgive them, Monster, for they know not what they do.’ Elder Pastitsios praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.“ – Image by JohnAntóno
ATHENS – I became acquainted with the Flying Spaghetti Monster when I was 17 or 18 years old. I was immediately conquered by divine pasta love. See, when the Kansas State Board of Education decided in 2005 that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in science classes, Bobby Henderson, a physics graduate, wrote an open letter claiming that if intelligent design taught schoolchildren that the Christian God created the universe, then his religion, which made the claim that the creator of everything is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, should be taught at schools too.
There is nothing fun about this religion though. In fact, it is not uncommon for FSM believers to stop at nothing so their religion and their rights as believers will be officially recognized. They are often persistent enough to succeed, especially through the courts. Besides, why should the state be interested in your deepest and most personal beliefs, and why should you not be able to define yourself however the hell you want? This is what our Great Spaghetti Lord stands for.
Well, this and delicious pasta dishes. Speaking of which, if you ever try Greek Cuisine, go for pastitsio (baked pasta with minced meat and béchamel). It’s divine (wink, wink) but beware, as it comes with heavy political baggage. When Filippos Loizos, 27, created a Facebook page called Elder Pastitsios – a pun on the name of popular Greek monk figure Elder Paisios, whose face was depicted on the page as a pastitsio – he was targeted by the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn. Golden Dawn MP Christos Pappas even made an inquiry to Parliament about the “blasphemous” page.
Note that Elder Paisios lived and died some 20 years ago in “Holy Mountain” Athos – an autonomous peninsula of 129 square miles where women and female animals are banned – and his image has been recently exploited by far-right and fundamentalist groups, who tend to ascribe to him beliefs surprisingly similar to their own. A lot of it revolves around how women should or shouldn’t behave, how immigrants will destroy Greece, and how gay people should be “fixed.”
The hoax – the parodic “Elder Pastitsios” account – was created by Filippos Loizos and started through his relatively low-profile satirical Facebook page, yet was quickly picked up on as fact by several conservative Christian blogs. The satirical account even made some newspaper headlines – all of which seemed to miss the point. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The Online Crimes Police Department, prompted by Golden Dawn’s official parliamentary inquiry (!) tracked Loizos down and prosecuted him for blasphemy. He was tried in January 2014 and sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended. As no insulting content could be found in what he posted, he was convicted on the grounds that he failed to erase insulting comments made on his page. During the trial, the judges kept asking the defense witnesses badgering questions, like if they thought the page was funny, or if Loizos was unemployed or had other hobbies besides Facebook.
Judges repeatedly, aggressively asking if something is objectively or not funny reminds me a bit of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland who decapitates anyone who doesn’t entertain her. Of course, in that story, the Queen has an ulterior motive. At the same time that Loizos was found guilty of nothing less than blasphemy, the Greek government issued an announcement demanding that opposition leader Alexis Tsipras publicly deny or confirm his atheism. Further, amendments were repeatedly proposed that would allow the Church to create companies exempt from audits, grant members of the upper clergy public land and protect clerics (who are state employees) from potential layoffs. When taken in context, it paints a bleak picture. Satire, and by extension, free speech, is on trial. And the Church, a holy business, literally, is implicated. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Especially when it comes to unholy web pages.
