This week, Congress is being pushed to cough up $700 billion (because apparently they just have it laying around) to make sure the incomparably wealthy executives from Wall Street investment banks can keep their businesses up and running (and incidentally, can keep buying ivory back scratchers and eating white tiger meat for dinner).

Sure, that's diabolically evil and all, but is it really the best way to spend 70 trillion pennies? "I could come up with a dozen ways to spend that money better," I said as soon as I heard about the bailout plan. And so I did.

• Buy the nation of Turkey (gross domestic product: $663 billion), cover it entirely with bacon and ham to make it a nation-sized open-faced club sandwich
• Clone 12 Bill Gateses (net worth: $58 billion) to constantly hang out and do weird non-sequitur activities with 12 Jerry Seinfelds (net worth: $225 million), place two pairs on each continent to confuse world about just what they're trying to sell
• Buy 35 billion Rock Band 2 sets (suggested retail price: $189.99), attempt to play them all at once, don't let anyone else touch them
• Add various parts to the International Space Station (estimated cost: $100 billion for NASA alone, plus the contributions of other countries) so that it has a head, two arms, two legs and a giant energy sword, because you never know when you might need a giant space Voltron
• Buy 2.8 trillion packs of bubble gum (about a quarter each), attempt to blow a bubble as big as the moon and have it carry me away in a heartwarming tale of whimsy
• Light 7 billion fine Cuban cigars with 100-dollar bills ($100 each)
• Buy 350 nuclear bombs (about $2 billion each) and ride each one while falling toward the earth, hooting and waving around a cowboy hat; continue until no longer able to keep going
• Make a 355,000-year-long call to New Zealand (at a rate of $3.49 per minute) in which you continually ask the respondent, "What's a wormdo?" and "Gayfagsayswhat?"
• Pay the writers, editors and publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary, Webster's and any other prominent dictionary to replace every word in the English language with "poop," then pay all speakers and teacher of the language to go along with it
• Buy about 700 billion crunchy tacos at Taco Bell (89 cents plus tax), pig out
• Attach 14 billion $50 bills to hooks on fishing line, put one or even two on every street corner in the world, yank away when some rube bends down to pick it up, have several lifetimes worth of fun
• Buy one tank full of gas (approx. $700 billion)

Add your own diabolical schemes in the comments.

KingOblivionPhD@the-iss.com