Livin' and Dion: Bad ideas — we're making them here

One of the qualifications for holding any city government job is the inability to recognize irony.

So it is that no one in Government Center even cracked a small smile when announcing that Fall River’s new “Make It Here” banners will not be, uh, made here.

Of course, the whole “Make It Here” campaign was made somewhere else. Only the original bad idea was locally produced. Fall River’s lost a lot of factory jobs, but we still make bad ideas here.

A regular person could not get up in front of people and say the Make It Here banners would not be made here without laughing. You couldn’t do it at all. You’d giggle or smirk or roll your eyes.

And this is why you are poor and don’t have a pension.

Don’t feel bad, though. Not everyone is smarter than you.

Take me, for instance.

Because I think I’m a wiseguy, I’ve been ending columns with “Make It Here” for several months now. Not too many weeks ago, I wrote a column asking what had happened to the “Make It Here” campaign?

I shoulda kept my mouth shut.

My computer had barely stopped smoking after that column when, ba-bang, another idea rolled out of Fall River’s centrally located, all-concrete bad ideas factory. The bad ideas factory is running three shifts a day lately, and production has never been higher.

As foreman at the bad ideas factory, Jasiel Correia has managed to increase the production of bad ideas by over 20 percent in just the last couple of years. They’ve been hiring new people. The bad idea factory continues to produce some of its classic bad ideas, but is always rolling out something new.

As the overjoyed owner of trash cans that say “Pride City Wide” on the side, I’m always ready to buy the next Fall River bad idea. In Fall River, bad ideas are like smart phones; People line up to get the newest model.

And remember, the bad ideas factory has continued to produce world-class bad ideas under adverse conditions. It wasn’t too long ago that the factory lost its “drug czar,” a position that is crucial to the production of bad ideas.

In addition to the drug czar cutbacks, many bad idea workers are struggling along on salaries of less than $60,000 a year. I think another round of raises may be in order, and I’m sure that’ll happen once the banners are up.

“If you’ve seen the 'Make It Here' banners we had made in New York, you know how hard my team has been working,” Jasiel Correia can say. “They’ve not only gone above and beyond, they’ve gone beneath and below and around and under. That’s gotta be worth another $5,000 a year. Each.”

Even now, overworked Mayoral Special Assistant Monica Sousa is out there convincing local businesses to display the banners. That alone justifies her salary, her benefits and anything else she’s raking off up there at the bad idea factory.

If you own a business, you can sponsor one of the banners, and they’ll put your business’s logo on the banner, and hang it on the light pole of your choice near the streetscape of your choice.

“It’s already been a huge success,” Mayor Jasiel Correia said of the program.

Huge. Already.

Have you seen any of these banners?

Me neither.

But it’s “huge.” Already. Imagine how huge it will be when they finally put the banners up somewhere! It’ll be huge-er than it is now, and it’s already huge. You can’t lose if you’re the one keeping score.

Meanwhile, street gangs like the Asian Boyz are driving around the city firing guns out of their car windows. The Asian Boyz are lousy shots, and if wasn’t so easy to sell drugs, most of them would be sponging off some welfare mother, but when it comes to trouble, they’re Making It Here.

But forget the Asian Boyz. Chances are they won’t sponsor one of the new banners, although somebody ought to try and sell them on the idea.

Here’s why.

The Fall River Police Department says Asian Boyz gang members hide their guns between their buttocks, believing that police officers will not search them in such a tender spot. Anyone who is willing to stash a pistol between his butt cheeks is definitely the target market for the Make It Here campaign.

I want to put a “Make It Here” banner on my house.

I figure it’ll scare off burglars. When they see that banner, they’re going to know that I’m a property-owning , tax-paying resident of Fall River.

And that means I’ve got nothing left for them to steal.