Tonight's episode: "THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 'CAN' AND 'SHOULD'"
Steven Spielberg's 1993 documentary Jurassic Park presented our culture with a very important moral, a moral that fertile people today have forgotten, and that moral is this: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they forgot to stop and think if they should." In the film, the scientists were so excited about making dinosaurs that they forgot that dinosaurs are vicious and bloodthirsty and wanted to eat all of them. HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING FROM THEIR MISTAKE? Look: we've all seen the footage. I was nine years old when I first beheld the tragedy that took place on that island, and I am not ashamed to say that I cried like a girl and had to be escorted out of the theatre when the T-Rex looked at the camera and yelled at the top of his unholy lungs.
But the point is: BABIES. Specifically, there are too many of them in the world, more specifically in this country, and most specifically in and around the place where I live and the places where I like to go for fun. And not just regular babies, but also the kind of babies who have grown up a little and can now walk around and wear pants and require health care...the kind of babies called PEOPLE.
People, there is a difference between "can" and "should." I know because I've seen what happens when these two concepts are confused. A scientist can make a dinosaur, but he shouldn't because it will spit poisonous acid jelly all over his face and eat him. I can fit an entire smoked turkey leg into my mouth, but I shouldn't because if I choke, nobody at the Renaissance festival probably knows how to do CPR, nor would they volunteer this service anyway because it would require breaking character. And most importantly, a sixteen-year-old and her just-got-out-of-prison boyfriend can get busy and make a baby, but they shouldn't because THEY DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY TO FEED IT OR BUY IT THINGS TO MAKE IT SHUT UP, like a pacifier, or polio vaccine, or an iPod. However, that hasn't stopped any of these situations from coming true, which they all have, some more than once.
Listen: this is not Ireland, and I am not demanding that we eat babies. I AM demanding that there be mandatory abortions for all pregnant couples who cannot prove to ME that it would be beneficial for them to have a baby. This application process will take place in a regular room, with me at a table dressed in regular clothing, and the expectant couple on the other side of the table. They must then proceed to convince me why I would be better off, or at least not 100% annoyed at the prospect of them making more of each other. This may be done by displaying photos of great things the couple has done. For example, winning a sack race or moving a piano up a steep driveway. Photos won't be required, but man, they'll help. Also, an expectant couple may wish to inform me of what they plan to teach the baby to do once it is born and old enough to learn how to do things. For example, if they plan to teach the baby to speak English, or some other language. It is not required that the baby learn English, but, like the photos, it will probably help, because I only speak English, and I have to be able to shout at the baby if it ever crawls into my living room expecting me to pet it or feed it chocolate, or whatever it is that babies like, and I do NOT plan on shouting in some dumb foreign language. Unless it's German, because their swear words sound close to ours. At last, when I have made my decision, I will inform the couple by awarding them with either a balloon featuring a cartoon bird on it and the words "It's a baby!" or a fruit basket with a brief yet tasteful note from me with the words "Sorry, but it's for the best" and a coupon to Bennigan's or a local put-put golf course for a consolation gift.
At the end of Jurassic Park, the only survivors are whisked away in a giant expensive helicopter back to civilization and away from the chaos that almost certainly would have destroyed our way of life and the economy had the dinosaurs decided to swim over here and get jobs and eat everybody. People, we can't just jump into some helicopter and fly off to another place, because guess what! There is no other place to go, and I don't know anyone who can fly a helicopter. If unqualified people continue having babies they simply CANNOT support and who will contribute NOTHING special to society, then they shouldn't be allowed to be born in the first place. Trust me, my plan is the only thing that makes any sense if you don't want to be stuck in traffic for the rest of your life when you have to get to Linens-N-Things before they close, and everyone around you is a moron.
Tonight's episode: "CATS: THE INHUMAN ATROCITY"
Here's a funny joke: What has four legs, a tail, some whiskers, a stupid emotionless little face, no respect for anything living or dead, a soul as black as the Devil's heart, and poops in a box in the laundry room? Answer: A CAT. Oh, wait. That's not a joke. NOR IS IT ANY LAUGHING MATTER.
Warning: if you enjoy the company of domesticated housecats, you probably shouldn't read this column because it will only make you unhappy because every word in it is scientifically true, and people living in heightened states of delirium become unhappy when presented with the cold, dirty truth.
Now, some history. Ancient Egypt was a great place to live if you loved to do math on a beaded child's toy, be turned into spicy beef jerky when you died, and worship cats. But did you know that it was neither Alexander the Great nor the spread of Christianity that destroyed the Egyptians? I'll tell you what it was. It was those cats. Now fast forward three hundred million years to the time of the Ancient Romans! Try and guess who really killed Caesar, set everything on fire, and taught Nero how to play the fiddle. Did you guess a cat? Because if you did, then you are 100% correct. Look it up. Now fast forward again twelve hundred billion years to the days of the modern Americans! Cars are as big as houses. Houses are as big as mansions. Hotdogs are available in individually wrapped packages. Is it any wonder that a culture this absurd would allow cats to be kept in private homes as pets? Schroedinger had a cat. And guess what...SCHROEDINGER'S DEAD NOW.
But of course this really isn't about cats, because a column about how much I hate cats would be dumb and nobody would want to read it, and I wouldn't really want to finish writing it because it would already seem contrived by the third paragraph. So this is really about: THE iPHONE.
Man, the iPhone is dumb, am I right? YES. And here's why: we don't need it. NOBODY NEEDS ANYTHING LIKE THAT. And if you do think you need something like that, you're as big an idiot as modern advertisers hoped you would be. You know those movies where it's the future, and everything's on fire and cereal boxes are alive and people all wear stupid-looking robotic neon hats? That's because iPhone was invented 30 years before the time in which the movie was set. The iPhone is the technological equivalent to my mom's argument as to why I should eat my potato salad when I was a little kid: "You like potatoes, you like salad, SO EAT THIS POTATO SALAD. I'M NOT TELLING YOU AGAIN." We like talking on the phone, watching TV shows, and downloading music, so we should LOVE the iPhone, right? iThinkNot. It was a weak argument then, and it is an even weaker one today. Mixing a bunch of things up into one dumb, stupid thing isn't innovation, it's deception, and if deception is the mother of invention, then she must have been friends with my mom back in 1990. I STILL HATE POTATO SALAD, AND ANYTHING WITH A LOWERCASE 'I' INFRONT OF IT IS AN ABOMINATION OF NATURE.
Actually, I like to eat potato salad now. Especially the kind with celery in it, because the celery is crunchy and it goes well with how the potatoes are so soft. But iPhone can still go to hell. Along with cats.
Tonight's episode: "THE SMOKING LUNG"
What's the worst part about smoking? NOTHING! It feels good, it looks cool, and recent studies indicate that smoking at least one pack of cigarettes a day gives you super powers such as breathing underwater and the ability to communicate with animals and foreigners using invisible brain lasers. Also, girls are impressed when you can make the smoke come out of your nose, like a dragon.
Unfortunately, everybody knows that all of that stuff I just told you is a lie. (Except the part about it making you feel good and look cool, because those are just undeniable facts, even doctors think so.) So the real problem is this: why do we like to smoke when we know it's so deadly? The answer to that question is that it makes us feel human, and nothing is more human than being dead. Smoking is an activity that everybody in the world can embrace, just like soccer if soccer were actually embraced by everybody in the world and not just by everybody in the world except Americans, who like to watch people drive cars around really fast instead. EVERYBODY can smoke, and most do at some point in their lives. It can be glamorous, like when a movie star does it, but it can also be trashy, like when a movie star who isn't very good-looking does it. But most simply, people smoke because people need something to do. It's just a shame that that particular something has to be something that scorches your lungs and makes your heart explode...
UNTIL NOW! Are you listening, big tobacco? Because I'M ABOUT TO BLOW YOUR PANTS OFF with an idea that will make you, and subsequently me, an amount of money so obscene that there isn't even a number that goes up that high. Like whatever number would come after millions, that's probably how much. The idea is for an invention called a "smoking lung" that people would have installed into their bodies to collect all of the bad stuff that's in cigarettes, and when it's rotten, you just take it out and put in a new one.
Step one would be to start building special clinics all around the country that would specialize only in the surgery required to install the smoking lung. The lung would probably be made out of silicone, so you could call these clinics "plastic surgery clinics" or something like that. Next, you would implant the lung into the customer's body. You could make room by first removing the appendix, the extra kidney, or the extra liver. Or better yet, you should probably just put the implant under the skin of the chest, since that's kind of near where lungs go anyway. And you should probably divide the lung into two parts, because people like symmetry, and one shape hanging off someone's chest would look silly. So after the implants have been installed, you simply massage them every once in a while to keep them properly aligned, and so that the tar and gross stuff from the cigarettes absorbs into them properly, and not into your regular lungs. Also, this surgery should probably be marketed primarily toward women, because everybody knows that it's very dangerous for pregnant people to smoke, and women are primarily the people who become pregnant.
And that would pretty much be it! The surgery wouldn't take very long, and afterwards, people could smoke as much as they wanted to, free of worry! People might feel the need to wear some sort of garment around the implants to keep them secure, but you know what, it would probably be best for them if you just didn't. You know, because they should probably just be left free to move around so that the cigarette stuff doesn't settle in one place. For health purposes.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: The column you have just read is remarkably insightful, and its author should be awarded with trophies, a free trip to someplace in Europe, and briefcases full of money.