by Chris Cannon
* * *
Canafact
In 2004, Canadians voted the “Father of Medicare,” Thomas Douglas, the “greatest Canadian of all time.” A Canadian circumcision is known as a “Tommy D.”
It’s a Promise!
Terminally ill patients will have the right to end their lives on their own terms. Religious groups opposing this policy have the right to heal said patients.
* * *
3.6 Helping Children Determine Their Value as Future Americans
Hello kids! You are lucky enough to have been born into a society that values integrity and hard work over inherited wealth.
Just kidding! LOL! Actually your future status is largely decided by the status of your parents, amended by ancillary factors such as race, gender, geography, immigration status, and the prevailing political party. Some people like to invoke the phrase “class warfare” when determining status. We prefer to think of it as a “class gangbang,” in which your value is determined by who is on top. To clarify your future place in the U.S. caste pyramid, please fill out the following questionnaire and calculate your score at the bottom.
How many parents do you have?
a) 0
b) 1
c) 2
d) Including the help?
How big is your house?
a) I have one?
b) Duplex
c) Mansion
d) I have one?
What’s your favorite game?
a) Hide and seek with the INS
b) Pin the tail on the honky
c) Monopoly
d) Monopoly for reals
What movie most resembles your life?
a) The Passion of the Christ
b) Dazed and Confused
c) Brewster’s Millions
d) The George Lucas rerelease of Brewster’s Millions with CGI billions
What’s your favorite electronic toy?
a) A stick
b) Simon
c) Xbox
d) NASDAQ
Who is your personal hero?
a) Che Guevara
b) Malcolm X
c) Harvey Milk
d) Alan Greenspan
How many brown children are in your classroom?
a) Most
b) Some
c) I see the janitor on occasion
d) Do tans count?
Do you ever hear Daddy say the words “capital gains”?
a) Never
b) Sometimes
c) Only when he’s cursing about taxes
d) That is the name of our yacht
What is the most popular subject at your school?
a) Survival
b) Lawn maintenance
c) Photography
d) Tax law
What is your favorite playground activity?
a) Kicking dirt
b) Swinging
c) Feeding the pony
d) Handicapping the pony market
At which weapon are you most skilled?
a) Uzi
b) Glock
c) Archery
d) Litigation
Where do you go on vacation?
a) Detroit
b) Delaware
c) Disney World
d) Actual Disney World, the secret recreation planet
How do you spend your summers?
a) Foraging
b) Helping family members cross
c) Hunting big game
d) Hunting foraging children and their family members
What do you want to be when you grow up?
a) Alive
b) A cowboy
c) A doctor
d) Immortal
Calculate your score:
a = 0
b = 1
c = 2
d = 10
Platinum: Why are you wasting your time taking a test?
Gold: Your family has plenty of this stashed away and plating your fixtures.
Silver: There is hope. Try lying on a few applications or blackmailing an authority figure.
Bronze: Your options are professional athlete or military service.
Thanks for Trying: The authorities are on their way.
* * *
It’s a Promise!
We will change the phrase “job creators” to “job creationists,” and give them seven days to actually create some.
* * *
3.7 Obesity: Big Thoughts on Big People
We would like to give our readers a brief history of hunger. It seems everyone in the world has been well fed since the dawn of humanity, and then suddenly, in 1984, Bob Geldof discovered hunger in Ethiopia. He gathered some friends together and recorded a song called “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and played it for the hungry people, because apparently music cures hunger. When hunger returned a year later, they realized they forgot to serve dessert, so some Americans threw together “We Are the World,” and hunger was wiped from the face of the earth.
But now hunger is back, and this time it’s serious, because it has moved beyond third-world nations and begun affecting first-world people—you know, people that matter. Headlines across the West increasingly warn of worldwide food shortages, with sharp jumps in the price of rice and wheat. A major U.S. grocery chain recently limited shoppers to buying 80 pounds [36.3 kilograms. Get used to it.] of rice per visit. We don’t know about you, but the thought of North Americans being limited to 80 pounds of starch with their evening meal sends shivers up our spines, and we don’t want to wait until each of us is restricted to twenty large pizzas per lunch break before we do something about it.
Of course the logical solution would be to eat less, but... well, seriously, like that’s going to happen on its own. In 2008, for the first time in history, the obese people on the planet began to outnumber the starving people. One would think that North Americans and Africans could find common ground in their constant obsession with finding food, but until someone proposes a plan for the obese people to simply eat the starving people, it seems each continent will have to fend for itself.
According to the Canada Party Institute of Shit We Make Up, North Americans rank their needs in the following order:
1 Television
2 Thousands and thousands of calories daily
3 Porn
[ . . . ]
132 Absorbent pads
133 Dinosaur movies
134 Garnish vegetables
For our part, we intend to repurpose America’s second-largest civilian employer to address the serious health issues of poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle. That’s right—the U.S. Postal Service will finally be delivering good news.
As grocery stores have embraced the vitamin-free world of food substitutes, consumers can no longer discern between a fish, a fish stick, and a stick. But with its sophisticated distribution network and relative efficiency (compared to Congress and Parliament), the U.S. Mail is ideally suited to distribute healthy, local food to nearly every American on a daily basis, meaning the Postal Service—now the Food Service—will at last transport something worth the postage.
This new operation will also provide a valuable service to our farmers and alternative-energy industries. When citizens claim their daily food package, they will return vegetable refuse from previous deliveries, which will be converted to biofuel and compost at the repurposed postal facilities. These facilities will fuel the entire vehicle fleet and generate vast quantities of fresh, nutrient-rich soil to replace the chemicals and synthetic fertilizers that are destroying our farmland and waterways. (Our apologies to Monsanto, who for more than a century have [TEXT R
EDACTED].) [Not even kidding here, we are scared to death to make a joke about Monsanto.]
But what good is nutritious food without daily exercise? It’s no secret that we’ve become a continent of torpid slackers (what some might call a “broken escalator,” others might call “stairs”). Enter stage two of our plan to make the postal service a lid for America’s cookie jar. Rather than drop daily meals on your doorstep, our drivers will cruise “ice-cream-truck-style” down the street, enticing consumers to chase their supper by playing “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” over the loudspeaker. Not only will this aid a proportional exercise-to-caloric-intake ratio, but an endless (and endlessly hilarious) string of iPhone videos capturing fat people doing “dinner sprints” will launch a whole new class of YouTube channels.
* * *
Canafact
The Canadian national dish, poutine, is comprised of french/freedom fries, gravy, and cheese curds. The International Olympic Committee has classified Canadian cuisine as an extreme sport.
It’s a Promise!
Fast-food mascots must be thematically tied to the nutritional value of the product they’re selling. Everyone, please give a warm welcome to Ronald McInsulin.
* * *
3.8 All We Are Saying Is Give Guns a Chance
Despite Canada’s pathetic attempt to arm its civilians—a paltry two hundred or so gun deaths in Canada each year, compared to America’s impressive ten thousand plus—we recognize that the United States is steeped in gun culture, and we wouldn’t dream of infringing on Americans’ second-amendment right to live in fear of British troops rolling up on their shore with a discounted shipment of Royal Family commemorative plates.
We will, in fact, support the notion of “gun rights” to a greater extent than any administration since Teddy Roosevelt’s “Hatriot Act” of 1902. And by that, we mean guns will now have rights of their own. For decades, guns have been slandered by left-wing bullet-dodgers as somehow being responsible for killing people when they are really just doing what they were designed to do: kill people.
As guns actually outnumber Americans now, we believe firearms are long overdue for protection from the people who use them. We are pleased to announce our Bill of Rights for Guns, affectionately known around the office as “Every Gun a Loaded Gun.”
I Guns shall not be used as a substitute for a penis, no matter how small, sad, and lonely said penis may be.
II Guns are not people, but they share the basic human right to be loud and careless when mixed with alcohol.
III Guns shall not be made to kill things that are smaller than they are. Asking your AK-47 to shoot a rabbit belittles your weapon and poisons the stew.
IV Guns have the right to misfire if they choose, particularly in cases where they have been loaded with the wrong ammunition or against their will.
V Same-caliber guns have an inalienable right to share a drawer, just like socks, earrings, and two-piece swimsuits.
VI Teenagers shall be educated in proper gun use, including holstering, trigger locks, and abstaining from guns altogether.
VII Guns shall not be sent to fight in wars on falsified intelligence to serve a political agenda, and should they make the ultimate sacrifice, government shall make no rule preventing their broken barrels from being shown on the evening news.
VIII Every gun is entitled to shelter and basic preventive care—nothing fancy, just a box and some regular lube—so that we may keep guns off the streets.
IX Guns have the right to be gathered in groups, organized for piece-ful assembly, and, providing they pose no physical threat, to shoot their mouths off without fear of being muzzled.
X It should go without saying, but guns have the right to keep and bear other guns. (Within reason.)
* * *
Canafact
Out of politeness, all Canadian guns have built-in silencers.
It’s a Promise!
The Second Amendment doesn’t say anything about ammunition. Introducing our BLAMMO policy—Balanced Limits on Ammo.
* * *
3.9 Crime and Punishment, and then Crime Again
America has done a terrific job keeping criminals off the streets by making prison such a fashionable option. Accounting for only 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. can boast 23 percent of the world’s prisoners (the most on earth), with more than 3 percent of U.S. adults incarcerated, on probation, or on parole. As we have no first-hand experience with the American prison system, we must conclude from these statistics that being incarcerated is incredibly fun, and U.S. citizens don’t really “go to jail,” they are just taking a “vacation from crime.”
Still, it seems a bit spendy to drop more than $60 billion a year managing these tranquil retreats, much of it going to private corrections companies that have created business models that finally make crime pay. Fortunately, these companies’ profits are cycled back into the economy through millions in political donations and lobbying the government for longer prison sentences so these trendy corrections-cabanas won’t go to waste.
We also find it unsporting that so many attendees don’t really earn their vacation, taking advantage of the “War on Drugs” to sneak into prison without really doing anything wrong. And while we understand that the black man in America has had a rough time, it’s unfair to the other races that they are hogging jail cells at six times the rate of deserving white folk.
We realize how unpopular it would be to close these barbed-wire Disneylands and prevent future freeloaders through radical and inexpensive ideas like sports and music programs for children. However, since more than half of these inmates take this holiday more than once, and many of them vacation for years—even decades—at a time, it seems far too easy to take advantage of the current system.
Which is why we’ve developed a four-step Canada Party “Working Vacations” plan to close the loopholes that currently allow 2.3 million citizens to lounge on the taxpayers’ dime:
Step one: Legalize “the Kind,” tax the shit out of it, and use the proceeds to elevate impoverished children instead of waiting around to debase them as adults. (See Chapter 4.5, “Weed. Sweet, Sweet Weed.”)
Step two: Make criminals earn their way into prison the same way karaoke singers earn their fifteen minutes of fame and thirty years of drug abuse: through nationally televised talent shows. By combining our love of contest shows with the thirst for justice, criminals can participate in American Idol–style trials broadcast in an episodic format. Citizens will judge by text message, with the sentence carried out on next week’s program. [Finalists will perform a duet with Dog the Bounty Hunter.] The texting fees brought in by each criminal will pay for their entire prison vacay. This is true participatory justice.
Step three: Rather than relaxing in the sunny prison yard and savoring daily body-cavity searches (it’s like a cinderblock Fire Island!), prisoners will enjoy their working vacation by producing food and power for their local community. Prison land will be converted to greenhouses and orchards, and inmates taught every aspect of farming. Weight rooms will be wired to convert all that wasted human energy into electricity. The Bureau of Prisons will contract with alternative-energy companies to train inmates as technicians for solar and wind technology. The inmates will be paid minimum wage for building these devices—greatly reducing the cost of producing alternative energy—with 90 percent of their income held in escrow until their release.
Step four: Citizens will emerge from their working vacation fit, well nourished, highly skilled, and with savings in the bank. Parole officers will coordinate with farms and the same alternative-energy companies to hire these trained, experienced growers and technicians to go straight to work for a decent, living wage. As these workers achieve seniority, they will return to prisons to train and mentor future farmers and technicians.
We realize, of course,
that this system doesn’t work for everybody. There will always be a small percentage of inmates who aren’t so into planting trees as they are into raping and murdering them. For these special clients, we are working on a “Fighting Vacations” plan to augment our brave soldiers serving in conflicts around the world. If America’s enemies don’t like facing our best citizens, let’s see how they like it when we send them our worst.
* * *
Canafact
Many Canadian criminals are sentenced to Brett Ratner movie marathons. The recidivism rate in Canada is the lowest in the world.
It’s a Promise!
We will allow one abortion for every person on death row. Congratulations, Texas—you are now home to Six Flags Over Planned Parenthood.
* * *
Treating Experts like Mammals
An Ideological Throwdown!
4.1 Grandpa Lost His Shins in the Big One: Our Statute of Limitations on Living Off Other People’s Sacrifices
Sooner or later we need to accept that the “Greatest Generation” was about two generations ago, and we have since been riding the coattails of our grandparents’ valor. At some point in the past fifty years, we decided our species had sacrificed enough and it was time to enjoy ourselves at the expense of our own grandchildren, like the guy who brings nothing to the party, hits on the host’s girlfriend, then pukes on her dress on the way out. And that’s what we’re saying to our grandkids: “Thanks for the fun, sorry about the mess—but for what it’s worth, the endangered sea bass was delicious.”
