The Most Serene Republic of Shets and Giggles
Following a link on Mr. Spencer Watson’s site (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi), I created a mock nation for some simulation game.
Let me acquaint you with my nation (the computer wrote the description based on my answers to a questionaire. My FAVORITE line is the last line):
Name: The Most Serene Republic of Shets and Giggles
National Motto: “Do it like the monkeys.”
UN Category: Inoffensive Centrist Democracy
Civil Rights: Good
Economy: Reasonable
Political Freedoms: Excellent
Location: the South Pacific
The Most Serene Republic of Shets and Giggles is a tiny, devout nation, remarkable for its absence of drug laws. Its hard-nosed, intelligent population of 5 million have some civil rights, but not too many, enjoy the freedom to spend their money however they like, to a point, and take part in free and open elections, although not too often.
The enormous government juggles the competing demands of Religion & Spirituality, Law & Order, and Healthcare. The average income tax rate is 29%, but much higher for the wealthy. A very small private sector is dominated by the Trout Farming industry.
Crime is moderate. Shets and Giggles’s national animal is the volkswagon bus, which frolics freely in the nation’s many lush forests, and its currency is the children.
It’s Time for a Vacation
I just paid off most of my estimated taxes for the year so now that I’m short on cash, I spent yesterday afternoon looking up vacation spots for young singles (as you all know, I prefer to travel alone, for a variety of reasons). Apparently, this activity so exhausted/depressed me, that I went home and slept for 13 hours.
Some great great resources for you guys:
Contiki Vacations (www.contiki.com) offers travel packages for 18-35 year olds. That means, you don’t end up surrounded by the elderly and families. A friend of mine went to Europe with them and she said it was awesome; she met a lot of cool people and hooked up a lot. The bad news, from what I gather on their message boards, is that you end up with a lot of dumb 18 year-olds who have never been away from home (aka expect stupid drama and babysitting), and predatorial 35 year-old men asking said 18 year-olds if they have boyfriends.
They own a resort on the Greek island of Mykonos (http://www.contikiresorts.com/mykonos/). It’s like year-round Spring Break in the Mediterranean. I, personally, would rather be on a tiny tropical island with all of the male Olympic athletes (which was what I dreamed about last night, thus, staying in bed for 13 hours), but I guess this is second best.
And this brings me to the fabled Pink Palace, another beachside resort in Greece, which I read about in college (www.thepinkpalace.com). It’s supposedly the most debauched place on earth, where young people from all over the world come to drink, party and have lots and lots and lots of sex. And wear togas. This place seems a little too much for me; I’d like to at least pretend that I’m on a normal vacation. But it’s the place I recommended to my coworker, who saw me looking up the Mykonos resort and was trying to convince me that we should go together and pass ourselves off as a swinging couple to get more sex. I really didn’t see how that arrangement would benefit me, considering his reasoning was that, if we encountered a hot couple, he would use me to lure away the boyfriend so he could get with the girl. He offered, “But you’d have a pimp” as a benefit, but unless I’m getting some major money and bling, I think this deal rather sucks.