Monday, July 3, 2017

More like R2-D-too much...

Look, I'm not saying that I'm great with money, but can you believe this? Somebody just payed $2.75 million for R2-D2. Yes, 2.75 million dollars of money...
...for the blue one. Trust me, you don't want the red one.
It doesn't even come with Kenny Baker.
To be clear, this is an R2-D2 prop assembled from various R2-D2's-or is it R's 2-D2? Like mothers in law? Whatever, it's the R2-D2 that was actually used in filming both the original and prequel trilogies, so it is legitimately a chunk of film history, albeit a cobbled together one. But $2.75 million? That's like 110 college educations. Or health insurance for a thousand people for a year. Or an apartment in San Francisco (I'm topical!). The point is, I think R2-D2 is neat and all but anyone who spends that much on a movie prop, should not be allowed to have that much money.

Whoever bought the hollow, lifeless shell of everybody's favorite sassy fictional repair droid at auction is remaining anonymous which is probably a good thing because they are, at present, safe from ridicule. From me. And just to prove that this isn't nerd bias, I'd like to point out that I called out some similar acts of crazy town fan-stravagance when trekkies dropped $61,000 on the shuttle craft Galileo and $231,000 for a phaser. Yes, a single, prop phaser. Because something is wrong with America.
Above: College students enjoying a few years of freedom
before they settle in for a lifetime of crippling debt.
No, I can't go a day without knocking
him. Can he go a day without being
 terrible at his job? That's what I thought.
I don't know if you remember, but way back in 2011, I suggested that the way to fix America's wealth disparity would be to institute a system of level caps, like in an MMORPG. If you prefer to live in the now, I'll recap: I say we set a limit on the amount of money an individual should be allowed to accumulate. Because no matter how good you are at football or venture capitalism or just putting your name on buildings in giant, tacky gold letters no one, no one needs to have $2.75 million to blow on some pretend robot.

Look, I don't want to tell other people what to do with their millions of dollars but...wait, that's not true, I totally want to do that. And why not? With wealth inequity rapidly spiraling out of control, I don't think it's all that unreasonable to call bullshit on things like this. I mean, sooner or later we're going to have to fix this problem or brace ourselves for something akin to the French Revolution but in 21st century America...so, more guns. Lots more guns.
So did the French aristocracy not think that flaunting their ridiculous wealth
in front of the starving masses was going to bite them in the ass someday?
I'm not saying that they had it coming but, they kind of had it coming...

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