conspicuous consumption

[Bikewer]

The Affluenza thread made me remember a news-byte I heard on NPR the other morning.

Talking about preparations for Dubya's innauguration, they mentioned that one hotel had recieved a request from a guest making reservations to rent a fur coat.

Who wants to deal with a bulky fur on an airliner?

But worse, another hotel was offering, as part of it's 10,000 dollar plus package, two actors who will pretend to be secret service agents and follow you around to provide "protection".

[TragicMonkey]

Originally posted by Bikewer
But worse, another hotel was offering, as part of it's 10,000 dollar plus package, two actors who will pretend to be secret service agents and follow you around to provide "protection".

That's just stupid. Unless you spent the additional $5000 to hire an "assassin", who will be tackled by the "secret service agents" and thrill passers-by with your importance.

It's a sliding scale: $1500 for an insane stalker, $2500 for a jihadist, $3500 for a rap-music-industry-grudge assassin, $4500 for a personal enemy's hired gun, and the full $5000 for a CIA agent because you know too much.

For the ultimate in impressing people, you can pay $20000 and get a fake ambulance and fake paramedics and fake cops, who will cordon off the site as a crime scene and declare you dead in the ambulance. You can then be resurrected and appear at the gala accompanied by a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon ($5000), a religious figure who brought you back from the dead ($7500), or a time traveller who came back because you are too vital to the future to be allowed to die ($8500).

[Grammatron]

Originally posted by TragicMonkey
That's just stupid. Unless you spent the additional $5000 to hire an "assassin", who will be tackled by the "secret service agents" and thrill passers-by with your importance.

It's a sliding scale: $1500 for an insane stalker, $2500 for a jihadist, $3500 for a rap-music-industry-grudge assassin, $4500 for a personal enemy's hired gun, and the full $5000 for a CIA agent because you know too much.

For the ultimate in impressing people, you can pay $20000 and get a fake ambulance and fake paramedics and fake cops, who will cordon off the site as a crime scene and declare you dead in the ambulance. You can then be resurrected and appear at the gala accompanied by a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon ($5000), a religious figure who brought you back from the dead ($7500), or a time traveller who came back because you are too vital to the future to be allowed to die ($8500).

You joke, but there's a market for that.

[TragicMonkey]

Originally posted by Grammatron
You joke, but there's a market for that.

Heck, for that kind of money, I'd be willing to play secret service man for a day. Just don't anybody expect me to take a bullet or actually guard you, or something.

[Skeptic]

another hotel was offering, as part of it's 10,000 dollar plus package, two actors who will pretend to be secret service agents and follow you around to provide "protection".

Can't you get REAL bodyguards for a lot less?

Seriously, I would doubt the sanity of anybody who takes this offer. Sounds like paranoid schizophrenia: "if I pretend they are after me, I am important."