June 4 - June 10, 2009
editorial@boulderweekly.com

California’s greatest assets
If state lawmakers in California don’t get their shit together, California is going to be broke. Yes, the state of California will have an empty wallet — no cash, not a dime. The state is facing a $24 billion deficit, and voters have made it clear they want the budget balanced without raising taxes. That means finding other ways to bring in revenue or cutting state spending.

We put our heads together and came up with some helpful ideas that we’re going to e-mail to the Governator as soon as we get this issue of the paper to press:

Let the potheads go — The state spends $49,000 per prisoner per year on incarceration. Letting everyone out who’s in prison on a drug charge would save a lot of money, especially in California.

Tax plastic surgery — This could be a windfall for the state. Imagine if every set of fake boobs, every stretched face and every Botox injection came with a 25 percent vanity tax.

Hold a celebrity panhandling fund-raiser — Imagine Brad on one corner and Angelina on the other. Who wouldn’t want to stop and give them a fiver for the great state of California?

Have Arnold make another movie — Take Kindergarten Cop, combine it with Terminator and donate the proceeds to the state treasury.

Start a state-run celebrity gossip rag — Photographers who stalk celebs can get thousands for a single photograph. Imagine if the state of California started making money off its greatest asset?

The old-fashioned way
Colorado Springs has caught our eye yet again. No, a conservative pundit hasn’t declared Obama a terrorist (although that might be true), nor has the leader of a fundamentalist Christian organization come out of the closet (again, maybe). It doesn’t even have anything to do with government practices or sexual harassment at the Air Force. Nope, this time, it’s got everything to do with boobs.

After being accused of participating in a never-carried-out plot to kill her boyfriend’s mother, 21-year-old Sophia Nicole Aslept has been sentenced to two years in prison by a Colorado Springs judge. Though struck with a miniature baseball bat, the intended victim was thankfully not killed — her decision to turn on her call alarm after being hit forced her attackers to abandon the plot. But what would prompt such violence from young adults? Drugs? Gang problems? As it turns out, the plot was all part of plan to steal the woman’s car and then use the money from stealing the car to buy breast implants for Aslept.

We can’t possibly express how much this story disappoints us. It’s a sad state of affairs when the youth of America would stoop so low as to consider murder in order to gain funding for breast implants of all things. Whatever happened to getting breast implants the old-fashioned way? Like working your way through the ranks of escort services in order to buy those double-Ds with your own hard-earned cash. Or, at the very least, putting yourself out there for a very rich, very old man who needs company. In the land of the free and the home of brave, there are number of ways to put your best chest forward — and none of them have to involve murder.

It’s all in a name
On June 2, Alain Robert, a French climber who goes by the nickname of “Spiderman,” was arrested in downtown Sydney, Australia, after scaling a 41-story building. The feat was accomplished without the use of ropes or any other sort of technical equipment. Yes, that’s right — “Spiderman” scaled the building with his bare hands, creating a large mass of onlookers below and stopping traffic.

And though it might be an incredible accomplishment in the eyes of many, we have some news flashes the wannabe Spidey. In order to call yourself “Spiderman,” there are a few requirements that need to be fulfilled. First, where’s the mask, dude? Spiderman wears red masks, not French berets. And we’re pretty sure that if you’re going to be scaling a skyscraper, it better be to save somebody’s life or thwart off of the evil Dr. Octopus — Spiderman isn’t about creating a scene for no reason, afterall.

So before we go celebrating this new daredevil — or try to make another documentary about French guys and tall buildings à la Man on Wire — Robert would be best advised to find and taunt a radioactive spider before changing his name.