The Labors of Rufus

I just wanted to crack a joke about underlying appeal of Rocky, a point I could have made in one sentence. Then I expanded my argument into a 961 word essay. And I still think it's funny, but I think it may indicate I have entirely too much energy going to the wrong priorities. To that end, I thought I should devise an agenda for the coming year. I've chosen as inspiration to steal an idea from Agatha Christie, who had Hercule Poirot decide to retire except for 12 cases, which he would accept as analogues for the labors of Hercules. All of my labors will therefore refer to the 12 labors in a manner only I will find amusing.

To begin my task I need to bring myself closer to Hercules, to build the proper mindframe. Hercules found that only the claws of the Nemean Lion could pierce its skin, and similarly there is no way to approach the Labors of Hercules but through the footsteps of Hercules. Therefore like the legendary hero himself wrapping himself in the skin of the lion, I will immerse myself in Hercules. Premiere Pictures International have announced that they will hold an auction for the rights to Arnold Schwarzenegger's first film, Hercules in New York. After acquiring the rights, I plan to relaunch the film with a red carpet premiere (at Pavilion Place) on January 27th, followed by a worldwide relaunch, and see that this important modern myth stays vibrant in the public's imagination. I believe the legend of Hercules should be alive in the world today, because somewhere deep in the recesses of our imagination, taxis continue to speed by Mount Olympus, and making Arnold Schwarzenegger's first (and some say best) film popular will require a Herculean effort.

For the four weeks of February, I'll put the final polish on my plan to cure cancer, like Hercules in the lair of the Lernaean Hydra.

Once the snow starts to melt, I'll be able to lay the groundwork for another project. The Ceryneian Hind was a deer so fast that it could outrun arrows, that Hercules first sighted by the sun gleaming off its antlers, and the modern equivalent is the TGV with its electrical antlers. Minneapolis to other midwestern cities at TGV speeds should be competitive with getting a finger up your butt in security before flying into a suburb and taking a cab into the city. A Minneapolis-Rochester-Madison-Chicago route at 200mph could change traffic patterns between those cities, although I favor straight shots between major cities less than 500 miles apart myself. Within 500 miles of Chicago are Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, and St. Louis, with other medium cities in between, and just over 500 miles are Kansas City and Memphis. Also 500 miles, San Diego to San Francisco, and Atlanta to Boston is dense enough for high speed to offer inter-urban coverage the whole way, even if the whole length is too far by itself. With high speed rail, there are a lot of competitive routes based on travel time offering less hassle (by plane from MPLS to CHI, you never get more than 45 minutes at a time before you have to change modes of transportation or stow all your stuff under your seat) and the luxury of modern telecommunications. And by April 1st, I should have the bugs worked out and start laying some track. If this seems like a pipe dream, that we could ever have the money to fund this, I can finance it by reforming the New York Stock Exchange, which should increase government revenues by 2 billion dollars a year and free up a billion dollars annually for private investment into rail projects, based on the estimated 10 billion dollars a year the inefficiency of the NYSE costs the United States economy. Between that and the tax revenues from taxing foreign currency earnings of MMORPG players (like World of Warcraft gold piece earnings) there's plenty of public money for infrastructure.

I always get excited about the prospect of the Independence Party creating a realistic, centrist alternative to entrenched special interests, to really challenge existing parties to redefine themselves and shake things up enough to energize voters. But exciting and strange as they are, in November when the snow starts flying, the Independence Party Buffalo always seems to get stuck in the deep snow, while the Outsourcing Elephant and the Reactionary Donkey race by him. So in April, I'm going to create a party platform and voter outreach strategy as well as recruit a full slate of Independence Party candidates for every partisan office I vote for (5th district, US Senate, President, State House and Senate, Beef Queen, Grand Moff, etc.) On April 30th, I will deliver my strategy guidebook to them, with an inspiring story about Hercules' pursuit of the Erymanthian Boar into deep snow just like the Buffalo with the loud tie gets mired every November, and then we'll all go out and kill that mother#@!$*& Hercules.

May showers in Minnesota highlight a fairly annoying problem, the fact that some of St. Paul and Minneapolis' storm drains are still connected to the sewage system. This means that after heavy rain, feces start coursing through the storm drains, and parts of the streets and the river smell like poo. I'm going to fix the sewer system, and clean up the city of Minneapolis' storm drains, because now that I know what's causing that smell on bright summer days after a storm I find it distractingly nauseating. Seriously, it's like the cruel inverse of Hercules using the river to clean the stables, instead we get a river of feces stinking up the city.

In June I will devise an application for the Airbus A380, and if I have some time at the end of the month I'll figure out how to build it properly in one place. This may involve routing all air traffic everywhere in the world through regional hubs, and then routing all hub-to-hub traffic through O'Hare. This will mean a trip from Zurich to Ft. Meyers will require taking a 787 from Zurich to Amsterdam, an A380 from Amsterdam to Chicago, another A380 from Chicago to Atlanta, and another 787 from Atlanta to Ft. Meyers. That's just one possibility, I'll be taking other suggestions until July 1st on how to handle my equivalent of the Stymphalian birds.

After that I figure I'll have spent enough time cooped up in front of a computer looking at flight schedules and in cramped airline seats, so I figure in July I'll want to get out and stretch my legs. With that in mind, I plan to train for and run the Chicago Marathon, which I will obviously also reschedule for the 31st of July. With only 30 days to train, and my customary rule of never moving more than 300 feet in a day, I'll need Paul to chase me all 26 miles with a meat fork to ensure I make it the whole way, my own personal Marathonian Bull.

To get home from Chicago, I'd need to secure some better transportation. Given how far up their own asses Amtrak are, and the lack of interest I have in either eight hours in a rolling prison or spending 30 hours at O'Hare for a 75 minute flight, and the inability to rent a boat on Lake Michigan (which I could take back to Minnesota via Lake Superior), I'm going to have to create my own alternative. There's no room to expand Midway, and expanding O'Hare farther out into the countryside just exacerbates the crowded airspace and means more time on the blue line watching the spraypaint dry. So the only solution is to start routing flights to Meigs Field which will terminate in Chicago. I know this seems impossible, given that the prohibitively small size of the peninsula against the gargantuan A380, but like Hercules corralling the horses of Diomedes, what's needed is not a peninsula, but an island. In order to expedite the evacuation of Tokyo following an attack by a giant web-footed monster, the Japanese have created a floating airport in the harbor, which will be the basis of an expanded Meigs field, with a water shuttle dropping off passengers in the hospitality center on Lower Wacker Drive. And if the airlines or the Chicago airport commission oppose my plan with whines about the lack of successful water landings, I will throw them into a jet engine like Hercules fed Diomedes to his own horses.

Hercules' 9th task was like the greatest panty raid of all time, stealing the Girdle of Hippolyta and escaping from furious amazons. In keeping with the myth, I've been mulling over what I could steal from angry lesbians that would make the world a better place, but I was really stumped because other than their apparent hostility towards bisexuality, I really don't have any real major disagreements to exploit, unless like Theseus I were to carry off their queen. Eventually I realized I was just really off on the wrong track, and I decided the thing to do was to focus on the other aspect of the myth, so over 30 days in September I plan to steal the 900 million bras in America. The suspected link between the restriction of lymph movement and breast cancer requires a significant compensating benefit to the bra, and frankly there isn't a great case for it other than specialized bras (like sports bras) and situations. I've just seen too many women who looked perfectly fine without them, especially women with small, beautiful breasts that didn't need to be immobilized for any reason other than to support a multi-billion dollar bra industry, money that could better be spent on say... breast cancer research. Seriously, I say let women be women, and don't be afraid of breasts. The breasts want to be free, in the winter under a heavy sweater nobody cares what the breasts are doing, and in the summer let them be topless and happy.

With Halloween looming, I'll want to get some use out of my monk costume, and stealing a flock of sheep from three-bodied monster Geryon calls to mind the Holy Trinity and the way unscrupulous preachers have stolen their flock. Since the latest craze in politics is churches selling the lists of their members to political organizations or just harassing them in church or over the phone to vote and volunteer for the minister's favorite candidate. I'm starting to miss a simpler time when Republicans just paid off black ministers to tell likely Democratic voters to stay home. So in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I'm going to hit the pulpit and insist that voters start demanding Christian values from candidates like not bearing false witness against their neighbors, making inappropriate use of the Lord's name, and not killing people. This means claiming God told you political bumper stickers cause kiddie porn and terrorism while being the mascot for a terrorist training camp for Christian kids is right the fuck out.

Come November, I will head to New York and sort out once and for all what to do with at Ground Zero. Hercules held up the sky while Atlas secured the Apples of the Hesperides, and so I will build the Big Apple another skyscraper, with mixed residential, commercial, and retail space and lush greenhouses, all climbing higher and higher in a ridiculously gaudy twisting spire that seems like a tent-pole over the greatest show on earth. It will all rise up out of a plaza that will have a polar projection map of the earth centered on the very spot the tower is resting on, with all the continents done in Manhattan granitic schist surrounded by a quartz ocean. And it will have only one elevator, because I'm an idiot who thinks that sort of thing is funny.

As I return home in December, to gather with friends and family for the holidays, I'll want to something light and not so ostentatious or dramatic as the spire in NYC, so I will descend into Hades and capture the three-headed dog Cerberus, and make him into a rug we can all sit on in front of a warm fire roasting marshmallows. Then I'll finally have time to start thinking about the Iowa caucuses, and interview potential vice presidential nominees for my 2008 presidential bid.