Would you buy a balloon for 1 million dollars?

Spock (left) Balloon Boy (right). They could be one and the same!

I did not read everything there is to know about this case nor do I intend to, but I know the gist of what it is about so i'll summarize for you. If you want to check it all out for yourself, go ahead and follow this link. This is the story: Two years ago, a family from Fort Collins, Colorado claimed that their six year old son was trapped in a giant balloon that was floating away from their home.

The father called 911 really believing that his son was in the balloon! Apparently he was crying and everything. As you can see from the picture, the National Guard was attempting to rescue this boy as well. After the balloon finally crash landed, rescue specialists searched the balloon but saw no sign of the boy. They feared maybe he had fallen out,
 but back at the home of the boy, the boy was found in the family garage hiding in a box!

So basically, the boy was hiding in the box and the parents claim to not have known. Even though his parents "Claim" not have known, they still plead guilty. The mother plead to filing a false report and the father plead to wrongfully influencing a public servant. The mother served 20 days in jail while the father served 30.

Here's what Kanye West had to say about the whole affiar:

I think everyone agrees with Kanye, though, as the top heads of pixar have decided to incorporate this theme in their next movie instead of criticizing this boy and his family for trying to "One up" thier movie.

Movie Poster for UP 2

I love that Disney and Pixar are such good sports! The funny thing was that when this was first happening, random people that saw this believed it was a flying saucer! Wouldn't that be something?

Now the whole reason for this post... today, the family has decided that they are going to auction off this balloon for 1 million dollars! The proceedes for this are going to go to the Japanese Hurricane and Tsunami relief. Why not just profit off it themselves, you ask? Well, they are on probation and can't profit off this incident till 2013! The Government thinks of everything, don't they? It's hilarious how an incident such as this can generate millions of dollars. I like to call this "Stupid Money."

One of the t-shirts made in dedication to balloon boy

Along with silly t-shirts, they even have a game that they made for it. Just an internet game, but still... that just goes to show how something so dumb can be so entertaining for our society today. I sometimes lose hope in humanity... The parents got their publicity, spent their time in jail, no one was hurt, but did everything turn out the right way? What do you think? Did the parents serve ample time in jail? Should it have been more severe? Less? What do you think about this whole situation?