Tobias Fulner and the Art of Persuasion

(Disclaimer: this is a farce, and a poorly written one at that. Do you think I can save it in any form? This was written for my self-imposed Tobias Fulner writing challenge. Ladies, I'm waiting for your entries!)

Tobias Fulner was a very young man who believed in the power of the art of persuasion. Every day he would lift his head off of the pillow, stretch, yawn, and persuade himself that the world needed him to get up. And so he did.

Tobias was not a good student in the classical sense of things. He did not like to do homework or yardwork or woodwork or anything he deemed "immoral", a word he used so often it appeared to have less to do with morals than the principle of the thing. His parents deemed him an unruly child and made up their minds to send him to military school.

Little to their knowledge, Tobias, being a believer in the power of the art of persuasion, soon surpassed their wildest dreams and had quickly become an integral part of the Premier's inner circle of military advisors. Unfortunately for his country, Tobias knew nothing of military strategy. All he had was a gift for persuasion and a spunky, lopsided sort of charm.

Therefore, to the chagrin of all the other advisors, the country entered a war in a far corner of the globe. However, this war did not last very long, as Mr. Fulner quickly persuaded the other side to simply give up.

The next day, there was a ticker-tape parade in celebration of the heroic Tobias Fulner. All the children stood outside of their gloomy apartments and cheered for this bemused, funny-looking man who had a way with children and convincing adults to do things.

Later, spurred by the attentions of the local media, Tobias grew interested in the prospect of power, based on things other than persuasion. He had grown tired of continuously having to convince other people to do things. So, he decided one morning as he persuaded himself to get out of bed, he would do his last big job of persuasion. He would persuade the country to replace him as their leader.

So he got in front of the television cameras and the bloggers' screens and made his case. It was quite persuasive, and soon people began to question why he wasn't their leader in the first place. So the whole country mutinied and installed Premier Fulner. Actually, it wasn't a real mutiny per se, as the original premier was persuaded to give up his post too.

Satisfied, Tobias sank into a deep slumber in the cushy bed of the Premier's Palace, which had been built for him by an especially sympathetic crew of architects and construction workers. He woke up automatically the next morning when rays of sunshine tickled his retinas. But, having given up persuasion forever, he could not convince himself to get out of bed.

Days passed, with no signs of Premier Fulner reaching the outside world. Tobias was bedridden. The population became uneasy. They were unused to functioning without a leader for such a long period of time. On the twelfth day of the Premier's self-imposed exile, the people revolted. They installed a new Premier in his place.

The men from the moving company moved Fulner's bed out of the palace, into a small clearing in the nearby woods. Still Tobias would not stir. As it was, Tobias Fulner could not convince himself to do anything anymore. As is usual with these sorts of things, Tobias Fulner died.

At his funeral, no one quite knew what to say. He was buried under a large statue of a charging horse, in a plot he had persuaded the cemetery owner to give to him for free.

Population- NEED CONSTR. CRITICISM!!!!! THANX!

6,602,224,175. Do you know what that number is? That is the world population as of a July 2007 estimate. It is way too high. These gigantic proportions are literally choking our beloved Earth. To get this situation under control, we have a few options: we could all go to the moon (implausible), we could adopt children without homes instead of producing more, or we could just stop taking care of kids altogether (not going to happen). While the last option would have the most effect, it is the second one that is the most plausible.
Many people already choose to adopt children, instead of having them themselves (for various reasons). Because of the dire consequences of a ballooning population, I say we all forget about having our own kids and just adopt ones who have been abandoned by their birth parents (for various reasons). It would take quite some time for all children to get adopted, and goodness knows there are so many.
It makes perfect sense, ignoring bloodlines and related crap. There would probably be enough children to go around, without having extra ones to worry about. (If there aren’t enough to go around, remember that it takes a village to raise a child. You can share, right?) This is the only responsible and humane way to control the human population, which is burgeoning out of the Earth’s capacity to deal. We humans are putting a major strain on the Earth; in fact, we are the single most destructive specie to ever walk, crawl, swim, or otherwise exist on our small blue planet. Whether we are capable enough to clean up our own mess remains to be seen.
And don’t tell me because you didn’t start global warming or pollution or the human race means you are rendered incapable of doing anything to help. That’s like watching someone light a house on fire and saying, “It’s not my fault, I don’t have to do anything.” It is only decent to grab hold of the proverbial bucket of water and pitch in. My point is, we already destroyed the world enough, now let’s all help to put it back together again.
Scientific American had an article on June 17, 2007, pointing out how the Earth would be so much better without us, and revert back to its former green glory. Since nobody’s volunteering to go to the moon, children make people happy, we should all adopt children who otherwise wouldn’t have homes.

The figure at the beginning is according to https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/xx.html.