America, But Better

by Chris Cannon

  In addition to the new layoff policy, the rest of us will have to make sacrifices in order to remain a solvent kinship. Effective immediately, we are instituting a freeze on allowance hikes, bonuses for good grades, and perks such as lunchbox pudding. All travel expenses, including soccer practice and trips to the mall, will be reviewed for cost-effectiveness. Wherever possible, other expenses—such as the twenty dollars Todd gets for mowing the lawn—will be outsourced to the less fortunate Baxter children, who offer better rates with minimal decline in quality.

  Since Rebecca is an infant, and thus incapable of independent mastication, she will receive special dispensation from the new “Cutting-Your–Meat-for-You Tax.” In a related policy, there will be no more meat. Casual Saturdays will now be even more casual; by making it “underwear only” day, we hope to cut our clothing expenses by one-seventh. The annual family vacation will be held semi-annually in the playroom, which will be shuttered the rest of the year. The backyard swing set will now be operated on a “pay to play” basis. The Christmas present will be shared by all.

  Until the economic situation improves, each child will be limited to three prayers to Grandma per week, and no more than two minutes per prayer. All requests for Grandma to “look over” family, friends, and pets must be approved by management. In addition, no family members may have any further contact with Uncle Bob. This policy has nothing to do with the downsizing.

  It is incumbent upon each child to bring the spirit of these new measures to bear on their daily decisions in an effort to curb wastefulness and improve efficiency. For example, if you are not tired during nap time, you might find it a nice, peaceful hour to sew wallets. School days might be more fun if you think of “Show and Tell” as “Appraise and Acquire.”

  In the spirit of parity, management will be making cuts of their own. Daddy will no longer use the joint credit card to buy expensive jewelry for executives that are not Mommy. This will enable Mommy to make fewer investments at the “drinky store,” which, in the long run, will save us the expense of acquiring a fourth Daddy. Accordingly, executive compensation packages will be limited to continuing our weekly sessions with Dr. Peterson, who has been working as an outside consultant to keep the organization afloat.

  We are certain everyone will work as a team to return the Henderson household to its previous state of fiscal stability. Should you have any ideas you would like to contribute, the suggestion box is in the kitchen (please note the new coin slot).

  * * *

  Canafact

  Exxon and WalMart are now the largest people in the United States. But the average American is catching up.

  It’s a Promise!

  Corporations will still be people, but if they can’t provide a birth certificate they will be legally obligated to care for your lawn.

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  3.3 Thoughts on Relieving America’s Sexual Tension

  Let’s cut right to the chase. If God didn’t want us fucking like rabbits, He would have designed us for asexual reproduction, like the frigid but numerous amoeba. If God wanted sex reserved for procreation, an orgasm would feel less like heaven and more like acute gastroenteritis. If God didn’t want us to know and love our own bodies, He wouldn’t have left us with the instructions, “Do unto yourself as you would have others do unto you.” (The Word of God is much hotter in the biblical Aramaic.)

  Were these divine oversights? No. Did He suffer from some sort of Almighty schizophrenia? No. Was He distracted by Eve’s revealing fig bodice? Probably. Because the bottom line is this: God. Loves. Sex. We don’t know if He loves having it Himself, but He clearly loves it for His creations. And not just sex, but...

  Nudity: “At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.” (Isaiah 20:2)

  Exhibitionism: “How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself!” (ii Samuel 6:20)

  Incest: “And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch.” (Genesis 4:17) (The only woman on earth at the time was Cain’s mom. Ew.)

  Fecophilia: “And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.” (Ezekiel 4:12)

  Strip clubs: “Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts; and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame.” (Nahum 3:5)

  Penthouse Forum letters: “For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.” (Ezekiel 23:20)

  And what the hell, while we’re at it, why not:

  Fart jokes: “Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kirharesh.” (Isaiah 16:11)

  In fact, God so loves the sexual human that a man can’t get any heavenly respect without a working penis: “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 23:1)

  And keep in mind, this is just the King James Bible, which—thanks to centuries of papal councils composed of old men who weren’t getting any (see “Congressional Hearings on Contraception”)—has sanitized the Word of God for your protection. If many of the original books were still included, today’s Bible would read less like Bill Clinton’s official correspondence and more like Bill Clinton’s private diaries.

  The subject here is shame—shame of our bodies, shame of our healthy desires, shame of love—an artificial, unnatural shame used as a weapon against common sense, biological blueprints, and God’s own design.

  We’re quite confident that God, were He to pop down for an official state visit, could author a long list of things human beings should be ashamed of: racism, HMOs, child soldiers, irresponsible stewardship of our natural resources, enough gold plating on Donald Trump’s plane to literally support an African orphanage. [Google “Trump plane.” Have an air-sickness bag handy.]

  One might notice that “the human body” is not listed on God’s “Shame Sheet.” And if you believe—as many Americans and Canadians do—in the efficacy of prayer, you must logically conclude that God approves of North America’s multi-billion-dollar porn industry. If God wanted to destroy porn, He would drop a divine handful of tornadoes on the Vegas Gomorrah instead of the righteous Midwest, where He kills hundreds of His good and righteous children every year because, according to His vice president of public relations, Pat Robertson, the people just aren’t praying hard enough for Him to stop.

  The depth and breadth of our obsession with curtailing our natural functions reaches far beyond the belief that gay marriage will bring about the end of the world. Consider the policies of the Federal Communications Commission, an organization that allows unspeakable violence during prime children’s viewing hours but imposes fines and revokes licenses for the most innocuous of naughty words. Take, for instance, the policy of not allowing network television audiences to hear the abominable word “asshole.” You may hear “ass,” and you may hear “hole,” but not the two together. Worse, when a program does use the word “asshole,” it is the “hole” part that gets bleeped.

  Our policy regarding the sensitivities of the broadcast populace is simple. Upon taking office, we will combine all censoring organizations—including the FCC, the MPAA, and the PMRC—into a single federal agency. The primary function of this new agency will be to call every parent in America every night and ask them, “Do you know what your children are watching/listening to/doing right now?” Based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, we believe God would appreciate the sort of personal-responsibility approach to censorship He had in mind when He wrote the Constitution. If He objects to this
plan, well... He knows where to find us.

  * * *

  It’s a Promise!

  Abstinence-only politicians caught in sex scandals will have to play themselves in the made-for-TV movie.

  Canafact

  Canadians don’t feel shame, because it’s too cold to take our clothes off.

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  3.4 The Question of: a) Education

  A completely fictional—and yet still shocking—Canada Party survey shows nearly half of American teenagers report their future occupation as “being rich.” Unfortunately, a career as a millionaire is available to only 1 percent of U.S. citizens, proving that nearly half of America’s teenagers lack the math skills to make their dream come true.

  Less fictional—and more shocking—are the actual numbers that bear this out. Despite being home to some of the world’s best universities, the U.S. has an education deficit that it can barely comprehend because, well, it has an education deficit. With math and science rankings in the mid-twenties internationally, and a literacy rate below most of Eastern Europe, it would not be surprising to learn that most American teens believe the man who created the Dewey Decimal system was actually named “Dewey Decimal.”

  The Department of Education estimates that the average American reads at an eighth-grade level, and only 15 percent of Americans are “fully literate,” meaning, at best, our pop-up version of this book will outsell this edition seven to one. Hey, we get it—learnin’ is hard. Numbers can add up to all sorts of things, and if you separate the letters in a word, they can be reassembled to spell an entirely different word. How is anybody supposed to concentrate with that kind of inconsistency?

  Fortunately, the answer to America’s education woes has been sitting just seventy miles off its coast all along. America needs to get right with Cuba.

  Canadians find it odd that American politicians are obsessed with getting Israel and Palestine to bump fists on the other side of the world and yet have not been able to resolve a much less holy war within paddling distance. If you believe in peace in the Middle East, certainly there can be peace in the Middle Caribbean. You can bet if Cuba’s oil resources were as plentiful as their nickel ore, either their communist ties and human-rights abuses would be summarily ignored or the American flag would be knitting itself another star.

  But for educational solutions, it’s hard to beat their class-size maximums of twenty-five, school meal programs, before- and after-school care, free tuition, access to postsecondary education, and a national literacy rate of 99.9 percent—second in the world behind Georgia. (Yes, we too think it’s ironic that the most literate country in the world is called “Georgia.”)

  Canada ignored America’s trade embargo against Cuba to maintain a warm vacation spot on the east coast that wasn’t Florida. The growing number of vitamin D deficiencies in Canada during the sixties gave rise to a foreign policy of being friends with people in warm places. While Americans were burning their bras and dodging the draft, Canadians were working on their base tans.

  Capitalizing on this friendship, Canada, in its role as President of the United States, can establish a mutually beneficial relationship with Cuba by outsourcing the entire U.S. Department of Education. With Cuba’s guidance, American education will return to the standards that once made it the envy of the Western world. Admittedly, Cubans lag far behind the U.S. in vital areas such as crib-pimping and teen pregnancy, but as their cribs are among the most environmentally sustainable on earth, and their newborns enjoy an enviable infant mortality rate, these weaknesses can be overlooked. Cuba is a young, hyper-educated, America-thirsty land of promise, and when it comes to education, they have already done the legwork.

  By our transferring the entire Department of Education, Cuba will become a scholarly utopia protected by America, from America. Since the Ed’s annual budget is more than half the GDP of Cuba, education will become the country’s main industry, and the newly wealthy and modernized Cuba will attract America’s best and brightest educators for a civic career revamping the education system in a tropical island paradise.

  With the highest doctor-to-citizen ratio in the world and a level of universal health care comparable to (wait for it...) Canada, Cuba can serve as a model to revamp America’s much-maligned health programs, resolving such contentious issues as prenatal health, child nutrition, and frequent-lounger rewards for diabetics. Further, as the world’s first and only nation to achieve sustainable development, Cuba can help the Ed train America’s next generation of engineers, architects, and energy executives in the wise use and conservation of natural resources.

  Students will also benefit from our plan to provide teachers—America’s most underappreciated cat herders—some well-deserved rest. First we will transfer Guantanamo detainees to Thule Air Base, near the arctic circle. The questionable history of Gitmo will be waterboarding under the bridge, and we’ll see how desert-born terrorists react to snowboarding instead. The detention facilities will be converted into a special holiday resort big enough to provide every teacher in the U.S. an annual vacation, where they will be pampered with sunny beaches, spa treatments, and personal valets whose main function will be to tell them they are doing a good job. The length of these vacations will be directly proportional to the difficulty of the teachers’ work. Inner-city teachers will get three weeks every year. The art teacher at New York’s Dalton School will be allowed to press her face against the airplane window as it flies over the island.

  After their vacations, teachers will return to their schools relaxed, refreshed, and ready to teach children that there is more out there than what’s reported on Lady Gaga’s Twitter stream. Over time, frigid relations between America and Cuba will be the stuff of History Channel documentaries, as the distance separating former enemies becomes a romantic boat ride across the warm waters of the gulf. (Please note that, due to the recent addition of an oily sheen across the Gulf of Mexico, these “warm waters” may actually be on fire. We recommend you have some water on hand.)

  * * *

  Canafact

  If Canada and Cuba were laid end to end, people would be all, “what did you do that for?”

  It’s a Promise!

  Public funding of symphonies and sports teams will require recipients to teach music and sports at inner-city schools. Go Fighting Strings!

  * * *

  3.5 Health Care: More Than Just a Dental Plan for Hockey Players

  America can rightfully brag about the extraordinary advances in medicine it has brought to the modern world. No longer do men have to endure the perceived impotence of a mere three-hour erection when a simple pill can add a fourth. Gone are the days when women had to grow their own breasts. Americans never again need suffer the ignominy of tucking their own tummies, lifting their own faces, and suctioning their own lipo with some well-executed sit-ups.

  But referring to “medical sophistication” as “health care” is like painting your car with speed stripes rather than properly tuning the engine. The medical paint job in the U.S. is impressive, but its health care is badly in need of a tune-up. And tires. And a new car.

  American citizens spend more of their income on health care than any other country on earth, and medical costs contribute to more than half of the nation’s personal bankruptcies. But the nation ranks fiftieth in the world in life expectancy, and its infant-mortality rate trails forty-five other nations. It’s true that American medicine is the best on earth, but only if you can afford it.

  Since Americans place significant value on the freedom to let other people contract preventable illnesses, it would be unfair for our administration to install the Canadian model of universal health care, no matter how envy-of-the-worldish it is. Instead, we will expand your existing, publicly funded Veterans Administration programs and declare all U.S. citizens veterans of class warfare and thus eligible for basic medical guarantees. J
ust as countries defeated by the United States are still given assistance to build schools and hospitals, those defeated in the class war will have the pleasure of pap smears and prostate exams they otherwise couldn’t afford.

  Basic and preventive care for America’s 313 million veterans will be partially paid for with a flat tax on cosmetic medical procedures, including your -lifts, -plasties, -mentations, -ductions, peels, -hancements, and of course your nonemergency -ectomies. As Americans spend $10 billion per year on cosmetic surgery, a tax of just 20 percent will pay for the annual health costs of 1.6 million children. Your basic male-potency miracle pills rake in several more billion a year, and, taxed at the same rate, could wipe out childhood obesity and gingivitis in one master stroke.

  To help those struggling drug companies and plastic surgeons make up for lost revenue (heaven forbid a Pfizer exec can’t afford platinum butt implants), we will actively promote their drugs and services with government-sanctioned surgery gift cards. What better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than giving Mom a new set of boobs? And what could possibly say “happy sweet sixteen” better than the gift of rhinoplasty?

  On holiday weekends, we will roll out our Mobile Aesthetic Surgery Hospitals (MASH) to cruise the strips and boardwalks of Atlantic City, Long Island, and Malibu, providing impulse-buy customers with the professionalism of a clinic and the convenience of pizza delivery. Share a romantic Valentine’s weekend with your sweetie, recovering from couples Botox! Show your country that you are as potent as it is with a Fourth of July “Patriot Phalloplasty”!

  As if your new, better you won’t make you feel better-you enough, all surgeries will include follow-up letters with details on who else was made better by your own betterment. “Congratulations on your new face! You’ll be happy to know your $15,000 investment also gave a lift—ha ha—to the youngsters at your local orphanage, who are enjoying their new toothbrushes and dinner vegetables. Thank you for shopping with the United States government.”