List of problems has solutions

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, January 29, 2008

There are some problems facing us here in this country, including but not limited to, immigration, health coverage, cost of oil, Hillary, and finally, people who empty their ash trays at rural stop sign intersections.

It should be noticeable to anyone paying attention that smokers seem to have fallen to last place on this list. Indeed, with one being able to pick up a bowling ball these days that doesn’t reek of every cigarette that has been smoked in that place during the last 20 years, one might even consider that this problem has fallen off the list entirely.

For those who don’t bowl, but instead drink alcoholic beverages (which as we all know taste better in a bar), imbibers must now rinse down peanuts and popcorn with their beer, rather than cigarette smoke.

The whole ash tray dumping-at-rural-intersections doesn’t seem to be letting up, probably because on the way home from bowling or drinking at a bar folks are lighting up three and four cigarettes at a time, trying to catch up. Since I don’t smoke, maybe this doesn’t work so well in practice as it does in theory, but it is one explanation.

Immigration is a little more difficult to solve, but since we live so close to Canada here, and since even the blind can observe that no one is trying to sneak from the USA up into Canada, that’s a clue.

Everyone is trying to sneak from Mexico into the USA; therefore, we just need to somehow connect these two phenomena with logic, and voila! We have the solution.

After all, now even those of us who live in the midst of 10,000 lakes who are crazy enough to think the fish bite better in Canada have to have a passport, and to have a passport, one must have a birth certificate.

From where we are up here, perched high on the immigration ladder, the answer seems clear. Everyone should have, in addition to a driver’s license, a small laminated birth certificate. Next, we form a new police department, called the Department of Cold Feet. Anyone stopped who doesn’t have this ID is immediately transported to Canada—where we would buy and fence in Saskatchewan. If this won’t work, we’ll buy them North Dakota.

They’ll climb the fences there, too, you say. No way. It’s hard to climb in Sorel boots and Kmart parkas.

It won’t be long before word will get back down to Mexico that it’s colder than hell up there, better stay home. After all, living on a starvation wage and freezing to death doesn’t compare too well with staying home and living on a starvation wage and running around with no shirt on.

So much for that.

Which reminds me. The Middle East, with Palestine and Israel continually at each other’s throats also has a similar equation. Have you ever seen pictures of that country? Rocks, sand, and mountains.

Let’s buy Nevada, half of which is so barren that the government already owns it, and move the Hebrew people in. Then we’ll take the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that we give to them, and pay them to take care of our nuclear waste, which we want to bury in caves in Nevada except the 47 Caucasians and 121 Navajos who live there won’t let us.

Anyway, let the Israelis decide: nuclear waste vs. Palestinians, and we’ll save the postage on all those checks we send to them.

Let’s see, what’s left on the list of problems here. We’ve knocked off a couple of tough ones. Universal health care coverage is going to be a little tougher, but the first thing to do, which I’ve suggested several years ago, is to put three different sized doors into separate rooms of hospitals and clinics. The first door would be the skinniest, at maybe only 10-inches wide. Come in through that door, and your health care is free. The second door would be a little bit wider. Come in through that one, the cost will be commensurate with the ailments which that category of folks come up with.

The third door? Ah, well, come in through that one, and directly inside that door will be several accountants, mortality statisticians, insurance actuary mathematicians, and one doctor from the bottom half of his or her graduating class. This doctor would have had the choice of either going to a Big Door practice, or North Dakota. (Chances are good, however, that North Dakota may have been sold to Mexico. That would make the Big Door clinic more attractive.)

“Come to the MayCare Clinic. We’re sure we can squeeze you in.”

Thus would read the advertising for our new age of health care.

Oh yes, two problems left. Hillary, and fuel costs.

Easy. We’ll pipe all politicians, and use the hot air and manure they produce to boost agricultural production, which we’ll trade to the new Nevraelies for nuclear generated power.

Alan Linda writes from his home in New York Mills.