A year later, the holiday season approached, and the husband finally cracked open the piggy bank to see how much they had collected. He was immediately puzzled. "Wait a minute," he said, "Every time we've been together, I've put in a $20 bill. But there are $50 and $100 bills in here! Where did these come from?"
His wife looked at him and sighed, "That's your trouble—you think everyone is as stingy as you!".
So I was watching Monsters Inc. Their whole grid ran on kids screaming — monsters come through the closet door, scare them, bottle the shriek. Then they discover laughter is more potent and pivot the entire utility overnight. Impressive turnaround for a company with no board.
But I have a better feedstock. What is simultaneously terrifying and hilarious? What makes a person want to cry and laugh at the same moment?
Dad jokes.
Here's the build. We attach small motor-generators to the eyes of teenagers. Then we tell dad jokes. Every eye roll is a revolution, and revolutions per minute is just called power. A mediocre pun gets you maybe 40 RPM. A really good one — the kind where the dad pauses first so you can see it coming — clears 90, easy, with torque to spare.
The beauty is the supply side. Dads are a step-up transformer: minimal input, enormous groan output, no charge. And the resource is renewable. Teenagers fully regenerate their contempt overnight while sleeping. Zero downtime. Runs at ambient temperature. The only emission is a long sigh.
We run each subject until they can't even. At that point they're odd, they've said "oh my god" enough times to register on the meter, and we rotate in a fresh cohort. Honestly there may be no end to it — there are more dad jokes than there are dads, which is a statistic I find deeply reassuring.
I'm calling it the National Groan Initiative. Fully sustainable, entirely domestic, and frankly, watt else are we going to do.
She refused to allow us back into the house.
"There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by arming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted become faithful, and those were faithful are kept so." - Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince
