An Open Letter To American Consumers

Dear American Consumer,

If there are three pennies in front of you on the ground, two of them are "tails" up and one is "heads" up, which penny do you pick up? The "heads" up one, right? WRONG. You don't pick up any of them, because pennies are stupid. I hate pennies! Stores don't like it when you pay for things with pennies and everyone hates getting them with their change, so what's the point?

Pennies have no value. I tried to take some pennies to the bank recently, you know to exchange them for real money, and the bank was like "Nah, we don't really take those anymore, supply and demand, blah blah blah." Can you imagine? I have so many pennies on my dresser, you can't even see the dresser anymore, only pennies! That really sucks because I spent a lot of time refinishing that dresser with this really nice cherry-colored stain. It's a really classy piece of furniture. You should have seen it before I did all that work - Craptown USA, baby. Anyway, here are a few other reasons to hate pennies:

1) Pennies are popular with children and the homeless. British scientists may have discovered that pennies carry 3 BILLION more germs per square millimeter than silver coins. I'm still searching for the specific research paper that confirms this, but my guess is that regular people like us place a higher value on eye-catching, shiny silver coins, making us less likely to hand them out to begging children and street people (the "petri-dish demographic").

2) Pennies encourage socialism and Jerry Lewis. Convenience store counters across America now have those charity jars and "leave a penny/take a penny" dishes, compelling you to give and take money to and from strangers. What kind of screwy social engineering is that? Hell, while we're at it, why not draw up some magic, invisible "zones" all over cities that tell you where you can and cannot build certain types of buildings? Not on my watch, mister.

3) Abraham Lincoln. What an asshole!

People, please stop using these pennies. There are two things you can start doing right away to help. First, if someone asks you to pay $3.51 for something and you hand them $3.50, they're going to let it slide almost every time. Try it, it works. Second, send me all the pennies you have around the house or office and I'll somehow use them to buy a plane ticket to Washington D.C. Once there, I'll lobby every goddamn Senator and Congressman I can find to abolish the use of pennies. With a little luck and some efficient scheduling, I'll also be able to moon the Lincoln Memorial. Time is money and so on.

Sincerely,

Sloan Schang