HAMBURGER THERAPY
by DanKitti and Catfish
Joe Smith was an inventor. He invented all sorts of devices to do all different things. One thing he wanted to do was to be rich.
"If only I could invent a machine that could make me rich," he thought.
Then one day, Joe met someone who would let him realize his dream. He was sitting at his favorite burger joint eating a cheeseburger with extra everything, hold the onions please, when the woman sitting next to him struck up a conversation, saying, "I've tried and tried to give up hamburgers, but I always become weak-willed after a few weeks. Then I go out and eat enough hamburgers to make up for all that time."
"Why do you want to give up hamburgers?" asked Joe.
"Well, otherwise I'm a vegetarian, and I don't like the idea of killing animals. I don't have the same problems with chicken or pigs or fish, or even steak. It's just hamburgers. I wish someone could invent something that would be a good substitute, or even to stop the craving."
Joe's mind went to work. Perhaps the answer wasn't a machine, but one of those counseling programs like they have for various types of addictions. He felt he could scare and disgust people into giving up hamburgers. But would he himself have to give them up? A wave of uneasiness came over him as Joe entered his laboratory and walked over to the huge computer he used for all of his inventing work.
As usual, Joe fell asleep in front of the computer, and when he woke up, the solution to the problem was on the screen. Joe never once figured that all the things he thought up on the computer weren't his own ideas. Actually he would fall asleep in front of the computer terminal, and his kitti-cat, Cosmic Kitti, would enter things into the computer, after which Joe would wake up to conclude that he had actually thought up those inventions himself. And now he had the answer to the Hamburger Therapy problem.
All he had to do was put out a massive direct mail piece, telling people that what they were eating as hamburger was not hamburger at all, but recycled cat food from finicky cats. It was a plan thought up by cat food manufacturers to make their money back on products cats didn't care for. The companies had made a deal with hamburger joints and the stuff that didn't taste enough like hamburger was artificially flavored with hamburger powder.
"Why I had no idea!" exclaimed Joe, realizing that this time he was set for life. And try as they might to get him for slander or fraud, he knew he'd win because his computer never lied.
The following week, ads appeared in all the local newspapers advertising Joe's Hamburger Therapy program. For $50, the hamburger addict would watch a film about a finicky cat walking away from a bowl of cat food, the same food being thrown away, and cans of the same brand being sold to a sleazy diner. Later, all the hamburger addicts were forced to eat more and more hamburgers until they threw up.
Joe's Hamburger Therapy was a huge success until the cat food people found out about it. They knew that there was no truth to Joe's theory about the cat food - burger connection. So they decided to sue Joe for slander and libel.
Joe, of course, confident that he would win the case, didn't bother to hire a lawyer. Instead, he simply brought his computer to the courtroom. When it came time to testify, however, things didn't go as Joe had hoped. Without Cosmic Kitti to program the computer, no back-up data came up for Joe's accusations. He obviously hadn't done his research.
The trial went on and Joe's case looked hopeless until Cosmic Kitti got wind of the situation. Cosmic Kitti wasn't fond of hamburgers herself, and she knew they were not healthy. So what Cosmic Kitti did was collect data on all the hazards of eating commercially grown beef, especially after it had been processed into burger-joint quality hamburger meat, and fed that into the computer.
As it turned out, the case was won by Joe and Cosmic Kitti together. Admitting their initial misstatement, they still were let off by a landslide majority of the jury, all of whom signed up for the Hamburger Therapy program. Even the judge decided to give up hamburgers, though he sentenced Joe to pay 10% of the first year's profits to the cat food companies because they hadn't had any part of the much bigger scandal of the adulterated burger-joint rip-offs. But the cat food companies in turn turned the 10% back over to Joe as down payment on Hamburger Therapy for their employees.
Joe and Cosmic Kitti became immensely wealthy. They themselves could eat lobster and caviar every night. And within 6 months, the Surgeon General was advocating a hamburger-free society by the year 2020.
the end
