There’s nothing like watching a pair of fire trucks pass by, sirens wailing, and thinking, “Gee, I wonder if this has anything do to with the fact that everyone has been setting shit on fire in the streets for the entire day.”

I’m a pretty accepting person, in terms of cultural differences.  Not personal differences, though; never personal differences!!! But, on a serious note: the Ghost Money burning needs to stop. I’m not thrilled that I haven’t been able to go five minutes today without hearing strings of fire-crackers exploding, but I can be reasonable.

If bread and wine caused continuous widespread environmental and health hazards, then Christians would be the subject of this rant. Instead, my attention is focused on Taoists: God damn it, find a new method to take care of your ancestors other than lighting bins of Ghost Money on fire! There has to be some kind of alternative.

These ghosts need bank accounts. I mean, to be honest, they need to get some jobs and stop mooching off their living relatives who actually need the money to live life. Seriously, what’s the worst that happens to ghosts? They’re dead. They can’t die again if they don’t have pizza money. Is there some ghastly debtors prison I don’t know about? I digress.

Why are there no wire transfers to the afterlife? We can just do a Ghost Transfer of Ghost Money from the temples out into space…by some kind of radio frequency, or something.  It’ll be just like how the smoke from the stacks of Monopoly money set ablaze goes into the sky, only without giving people black lung.

Somebody needs to get on that, like, now. Because my throat feels like I’ve been eating gravel and I haven’t been able to see more than a half mile away all day.

Wire transfers to heaven. You give the Real Money to the same temple where they sell you the Ghost Money, but instead of getting Ghost Money, the temple wires the money to your dead relatives. I realize it’ll take some time to get each family set up with a Ghost Account, but let’s call it a Chinese New Year‘s Resolution, and start lobbying today.