CONTEST RESULTS!!!: Well, I got the best results for the farm-bill contest, so we’ll look at that last. First let’s turn our attention to the “When life gives you lemons…” contest.

3rd PLACE: Seth J. Farber: If you had two lemons in the Reagan Administration, you would use one to add to a school lunch program, so you could count it as both a garnish and a vegetable, and you would align the other with your star chart to determine appropriate foreign policy.

2nd PLACE: Father Shawn O’Neal, lately of Onealism:

Before the IMF gives you lemons,

1) you have sell the furniture in all your buildings to the working-class pot-bangers out in the street,

2) you must dispatch of your holdings by selling them to the Spanish for 20 centavos on the peso,

and 3) you must ensure that both the public and private distribution managers living in the estancias aren’t asking as much for “lemon

handling fee” as they did the last time the lemon boat arrived in the port.

When the IMF gives you the lemons, you have 15 months to give them full documentation concerning how those lemons were used — including that ones that were “mishandled” by the distributors who live in the estancias.

You also have 18 months to pay back the IMF in lemons even if you don’t have access to citrus trees, but the IMF does, so they’ll cut you a deal.

GRAND PRIZE: A matching set from De Feo: When Objectivism gives you lemons, check your premises.

When Catholicism gives you lemons, offer them for souls in Purgatory.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: De Feo again: When fascism gives you lemons, blame the immigrants.

When Lucrezia Borgia gives you lemons, you’re in trouble. Because she’s been dead for a while.

When Enron gives you lemons, give them back.

When skepticism gives you lemons, you can’t be sure they’re lemons.

When aristocracy gives you lemons, have them thrown at the masses.

When the Democrats give you lemons, it’s probably because you’re a minority.

When the Mafia gives you lemons, it’s a Sicilian message.

Jacob Profitt: Before the EU gives you lemons, you have to first reassure that you won’t put French or German farmers out of work, agree to the nine-volume “Organic Lemon Handling Initiative” (HILO) and visit Brussels to grease the appropriate palms.

When Bill Gates gives you lemons, you’ll be able to make lemonade, but first you have to agree that you will not unbundle juices or seeds and that you will use Microsoft-approved pitchers only for Microsoft lemonade and not for Sunny orange juice, Apple-MacJuice, Lime-ux, or ICM (International Concentrated Mangos) GS/2 (Grapefruit Sauce 2).

And two good ones from a seemingly bitter Marine: When the military industrial complex gives you lemons it’s because some congressman decided to write citrus subsidies into the newest iteration of the defense budget in order to appease constituents in his district…and hey, why not give the lemons no one wants to the Marines (Not that our unofficial motto is “We do more with less” or anything)

When the military industrial complex gives you lemons, assume it’s a goodwill attempt to add flavor to M.R.E.’s (That’s meals ready to eat for those who haven’t had the experience…and Meals Rejected by Ethiopia for those who have…you know that little bottle of Tabasco only goes so far).

______________________________

And now the big one–“Write a post about the farm bill in the voice of a literary character.” Enjoy, folks.

3rd PLACE: Scott Helgeson: Hop on Crop Subsidies

(as told by the Washington Fat Cat in the Hat)

Every blogger

down in Who-ville

liked libertarianism a lot…

Senator Grinch

(Independent, from Whoville)

did NOT.

He looked down at Whoville and anxiously thought

For my re-election voters need to be bought.

Then he growled, his fingers nervously drumming.

“I must find a way to keep subsidies coming!”

Then he got an idea!

An awful idea!

Sen. Grinch got a wonderful,

AWFUL IDEA!

He got in his limo

And took off with a screech

To the center of Who-town

To make a big speech.

“I’ll give you a thousand, I’ll give you a million!

I’ll give you a doe-decal-dupple-dog-zillion!

Just send me back to the Capitol, my dear

I’ll get money there, and I’ll bring it back here.”

He subsidized farmers and giggled with glee.

“Now the farmers,” he said,” will all vote for me!”

“I gave them money for dairy,

for big ketchup packets,

I even gave money

for mohair pimp jackets.”

And some say the Grinch’s heart grew 3 sizes that day,

Because he gave so much taxpayer money away.

2nd PLACE: Daniel Connaughton: “Angstrom held the NY Times with a gathering anger, the serrate-edged white pages garlanded with those ads of models, all svelte with their ring-appointed mid-drifts, slices of skin endlessly beguiling and

faithful to the long evolutionary line of tricks women have used to overcome a man’s fear of rejection, a display to marry pistil and stamen. Amid the skin and sex and perfume his attention ratcheted upon, quite perversely, a news item concerning a farm subsidy

bill. This was the source of his inchoate anger, and to his Dell he flew, typing furiously into his forgiving, warm, blogger spot:

“‘Don’t have time to link this, but it was in the NY Times today (link requires registration, blah,blah) – the bastards passed a $190 billion dollar farm subsidy bill…'”

GRAND PRIZE: Mark Byron. For vast, obsessive length–and because I’m biased toward noir. Click here.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Connaughton: Thoreau (not a literary character–not in that sense, anyway–but we forgive): From his blog entitled “Blogden Pond”:

I set out to live deliberately in the wilds of eastern Kentucky with only a lap-top and a lean-to, recreating a previous experiment in this “computer age”. Though a computer is not absolutely necessary, I plan to use it as a “word processor” and thus save the parchment and pencil waste formerly associated with the author’s trade. One may see the economy in that. I plan to blog only once a day, and not spend more than one hour per day reading other blogs, for the mass of bloggers live lives of paragraph-sized desperation. From the desperate city blogs to the desperate country blogs, few heed the call to simplify.

I chanced upon a day-old newspaper on my grounds yesterday, perhaps blown in from the nearby interstate with its thundering herd of trucks and trash-laden gravel shoulders. The story above the fold contained a humorously titled congressional bill: “the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002”. One hundred fifty years later and still we seek security from a congressional bill? Oh but pity the poor agri-business conglomerates, with only a governmental stipend to keep them in the sheaves! Surely without the subsidy of the government the mass of farmers would have no sugar or dairy or grain to give us and we would, wretched in our own failure to urge our

representatives to pass a Congressional act, be forced to farm ourselves, or better yet live deliberately off the land. Hmm…

Seth J. Farber: I do not like green eggs and ham,

I do not like them Sam I am,

I do not like this new farm bill,

It smells of pork from on the Hill.

Try them, try them, you will see,

There’s nothing wrong with subsidy,

Green eggs and ham are but one strand,

Of vast farm aid wide and grand,

I do not like this spending spree,

When our nation suffers calamity,

I do not like it Sam I am,

I think this farm bill is a sham.

But our land was built by the family farm,

A way of life with such great charm.

Farmers get help with the right quota–

And we might pick up South Dakota!

I do not like this, not at all.

I think this farm bill smacks of gall.

Our nation needs to stand united,

And not lament the checks it kited.

Try the farm bill you will see,

Grow a carrot, grow a pea,

Or raise some bees for honey–

Don’t worry– Congress has the money.

Say, Sam, I see what you mean.

For not just ham and eggs are green–

With MY check in hand, I must confess,

I’m now a fan of this largesse.