Gather Points, Green Stamps, and the Purple People Eater

An economic system is an arrangement where one person wants something and another person offers to provide something for something in return, though there’s a no return policy.

For example, Sethoranthum, an elderly gentleman, says, “My pecker feels puckish. I am looking for something that will pick it up.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Sethoranthum, says, “I sure wish ol Seth would stop pecking at me. He’s really a nuisance.”

Meanwhile, a friendly person in a furrin land, named Spamorame (the friendly person, not the land, which is furrin but not that friendly, especially when it comes to extradition) sends an email to Seth that says, “Send me your credit card number and I will send you pecker-upper medicine and you will be pecking away in no time at all.” Unbeknownst to Sethoranthum, Spamorame also communicates with Mrs. Seth and says, “Send me your bank account number and I will send Seth make-believe pecker medicine that will make his pecker pucker instead of pecking.”

Thus under economics, everybody’s needs are met.

In an economic system, there are different kinds of currency. For example, there is green money and there is real money. Real money is made of metal. So if you are faminished, eating green money will leave you hungry, but eating metal money will give you a full feeling. In fact, you will be full of it.

In ancient times, I mean really ancient times, before people began to believe in imaginary economic systems, people used real stuff you could actually make use of in your everyday life for currency. For example, a poorly clothed farmer would drive around with a cart full of grain. The farmer would spy a woman spinning by the side of the road, and put out a hand to gently stop her rotation, and then say, “I will trade you some of my grain for some of your thread.” Then he would start milling the grain while the woman started weaving fabric out of the thread, and then the farmer’s wife would beat them both for making hay while the sun shines.

A problem arose when the farmer came across a brigand who said, “I will swap you one of my swords for some of your grain.”

When the farmer said, “How many blades for how many grains of grain?” the brigand said, “You don’t understand. You just thought I said, ‘Swap’; what I really said was ‘Swipe,’” which the brigand did with his sword across the farmer’s throat. Then the brigands organized, and formed nation-states and tax collectors, which are also known as organized brigandry.

Various pseudo economic systems also evolved. For example, when I was a student, and then a teacher, we had a social system whereby teachers cast false pearls before real swine. However, everyone needed a system for keeping track so they could tell when the real swine were eligible to become oysters. Thus was invented a dual economic system consisting of grades and credits. The teachers would say something such as, “Write a really boring essay about something you don’t know anything about and turn it in by Tuesday.”

The student would say, “How much credit do I get?” The teacher would say, “If you explain stuff you don’t know anything about in a good way, you will get three smurgeons of credit. However, if you copy it off the Internet, which I can tell if you do, you will get only .001c smurgeons of credit, and you will be lucky you don’t get 87 lashes to boot, or with a boot.”

Or the teacher will say, “I am boring you with very important information about rocks of the Pelagetic Period, so pay close attention.”

The student will ask, “Will it be on the test?”

To which the teacher will reply, “That’s for me to know and for you to find out to your immense regret and grudginess.”

When I was a child, I was not very old. Even small children have to eat (though some adults consider it optional), so my parents took me to the not yet super market. When we gave them our money, they not only gave us groceries, they also gave us green stamps. As I was an obsessive-compulsive child, my mother let me paste the stamps into books.

We could trade the books of stamps in for useful items from the green stamp gift catalog. For example, we could get a potato-defiler. Or a widget cleaner. Or a whatchamacallit holster. In my day, we wore our slide rules in our holsters, to identify ourselves as nerds and geeks. Now gerds and neeks wear mobile phones, I Pod-Person players, and supercomputers in their holsters.

If you are an old person, you will remember green stamps and you will soon have to go on Logan’s Run. Race you there.

If you are not an old person, you can find out more than you want to know at the following stupid links:

Green Stamps (Wikipedia stub--go fix it please)

Green Points

Crooked Dope

Forgot what this link stands for

The main point (after you have ignored the links) is that Green Stamps have turned into Green Points. You can use them to feed your purple people eater (which isn’t that picky about its diet).

Gather has Gather Points.

The main point is that the concept of Point has been copyrighted and pateneted and trademarked and registered. When I was a kid, and two other kids argued, we would gather around and yell, “Fight! Fight!” and hope we could watch one kid beat up the other kid.

As adults when two companies argue, we murmur “Legal battle. Legal Battle,” and gather around our television screens or Internet screens and watch their lawyers battle in briefs and hope that somehow we will get some money out of the class action settlement.

In the meantime, if you spend lots of time online, stealing time from your boss, alienating your spouse (though why you would marry an alien I don’t know—their equipment is wrong) and neglecting your children (who will appreciate you for it as they are up to no good and don’t want you to notice), collecting thousands of Gather Points. Tear them off the screen, lick them, and paste them into your Green Gather Points book. I will notify you where you can redeem your Gather Points for whatchamacallit holsters as soon as I start the company, manufacture the holsters in South Suaviland, and strike a deal with Gather to make them available. By the way, you get 37.32 Green Points for working your way all the way through this stupid essay. If you stopped before getting to the end, you lose 3 alpha points.