Saturday, July 29

Smurfs

By Jason Stowell

I get a lot of letters. Besides being a collectibles expert, a psychic friend, and a dare devil stuntman, I try to help out unfortunate children in my spare time. So when little Jimmy Withers of Delmont, Wisconsin wrote me to ask, ""what the hell a Smurf was? and do you think it could be a viable financial investment vehicle?"" I got on it toot sweet (thats an old persons way of saying damn-ass quick). It seemed like an easy question. Smurfs are little blue...little blue...what the hell are they? At first I figured I must have missed that first episode where they must have explained what the Smurfs were. The coolest part of every cartoon is that origin episode. You know, like Superman in the space pod crashing to earth, or Batman seeing his parents murdered. So what the hell happened to the Smurfs? It seems to me they must be trying to cover up something, something they don't want us to know.

So what do we know?
1. They speak English notably with a generic American dialect, which rules out anyplace where people talk funny (i.e. the whole New England coast and the Southern states) .

2. They don't have snow. There goes the whole northern section of the US.

3. They've got plenty of yearly rainfall so there goes any chances of the Southwest or Texas.

4. We can rule out Georgia and Tennessee because they would have hunted down those little guys and made one of those road-kill possum stews out of them.

5. There appears to be no extreme changes in seasons and rather low yearly precipitation, yet everything is green and there are nice streams, so they must be living somewhere on the West coast below the California-Oregon border.

6. The fact that they don't live in fear of their trees being cut down or their streams polluted means they must be in some preserved areaa park or protected forest.

7. I live in California, and I know first hand you cant go into any type of forest or National Park without paying and they enforce that big time. Ive never seen a smurf with money and those park rangers are not too keen on taking magic beans for trade.

8. So what's lefta public park.

Some interesting observations regarding Smurf lifestyle:
1. They have a highly civilized culture. They don't have money. They like to help each other. Different Smurfs possess different skills, which are recognized and used to benefit other Smurfs. They have no large mansions or servants. No inner city slums. Damn these little guys are socialists! Their number one enemy, Gargamel, wants to capture them and turn them into gold coins damn it hes a capitalist!

2.There's something really weird about the Smurfsthey're all males except Smurfette. There is a baby Smurf so they are reproducing, but there are no baby girls so they must be practicing some form of gender discrimination. Now I don't want to go so far as to accuse them of genocide, maybe they send them to all girl park or maybe the girls voluntarily leave because the Smurf community isn't fun for a girl. Either way I think its pretty clear our little blue friends are living an alternative lifestyle and more power to them.

A good investment?
1. My analysts have noted a 37% increase in Smurf related sales over the last year.

2. Rare Smurf values have risen 20% over the last three years. Most mutual funds have been growing at 12 to 15% per year.

3. Socialist related collectibles are hot!