Stranger than fiction

This is not about the movie of the same name (which I thought was smart and funny, although a bit lacking in character development for everyone but Will Ferrell. Still, it had heart, and it charted a course between cynical irony and mushy sentiment. Anyway).

Instead this is about a caper dreamed up by one of the dumbest Republican staffers on Capitol Hill. I came across it on Talking Points Memo, as I imagine some of you might have too. But I felt it warranted mentioning here because I was so stunned at the ridiculousness, I wouldn't have believed it was true if it hadn't been confirmed.

It's like something that would come out of a creative writing workshop led by Carl Hiaasen (which would probably take place during a grouper fishing expedition).

So there's this hill staffer, and being the good little hill kid that he is, he's ambitious as fuck, and thinking ahead to grad school. But his undergrad grades aren't up to snuff for Kennedy. How to deal? Well, there's always the felony route!

So our hero goes to a website and posts a message looking for someone to do some illegal hacking for him. Two guys respond and everything's going great until they post all the e-mails on their website. OMG! PWNED! (And I didn't even explain the bit about how they wanted him to take a photo of pigeons in Fort Worth, but settled for squirrels in D.C.)

Now I'm sure the public shaming he's going to have to deal with won't approach that of, say, a young and pretty girl who dares drink at the age of 20, but it probably should. That said, I'm thankful for people like this. If everyone just addressed their crappy undergraduate grades in their personal statements, the world would be a much more boring place.