April 4, 26 J.E.
The other day my coworker and I
were musing about the mysteries of life, as we often do when we feel like
dispelling the evil specter of work which we are able to hold at bay for about
seven and a half hours a day. The subject of mortality came up (or was it
strained peas?). Naturally, this led to the subject of what to do with the
increasing percentage of old people in our ranks. We talked briefly of the
horrors of nursing homes, with a bunch of drooling, semiconscious, incontinent
shells of humanity puttering around, vaguely aware that they might someday die.
I said that I love my parents too much for that. I’d take them behind the tool shed
and do an Old Yeller on ‘em.
There had to be some better
options, we decided. I always thought they would make good doorstops, although
they’re somewhat higher maintenance than a rubber wedge. We considered labor in
some of the more mindless jobs on earth, such as politics, which has always
proven to be a spacious dumping ground for the elderly who are a few beers
short of a sixpack, but that’s a little cruel. Finally, we came to the
conclusion that there was only one way to deal with it before they sucked our
Social Security dry:
Soylent Green.
We also wondered what to do with
all the dead people. The U.S. is a big place, but sooner or later we’ll run out
of space. In Europe they just dig up the bodies after about 50 years and throw
the bones in a cave. In India, they throw them into their drinking water where
they putrefy. I think we, as Americans, can do better than that. Cremation is
so wasteful and burial is just a pain in the ass. I suppose some people would
be a bit too squeamish to do the obvious thing, which would be to turn them
into Spam. Irrational, but true. Heck, most people probably won’t even admit to
themselves that hot dogs are about 25% Mexican orphan.
The other option is pet food.
They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, nor would they care. I wouldn’t
be too inclined to feed it to something like a pit bull, lest the loving pet
acquire a taste for human meat. Of course, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to buy
something as dangerous as a pit bull anyway. Just tarantulas for me (I just got
three new ones! Woo hoo!).
If humans are still too
squeamish about doing something practical with the dead, we can actually put
the Dakotas to some use. These two exceedingly flat states have virtually
nothing to offer us except a lot of empty space. I maintain that if we
designated, say, South Dakota “The Dead State”, we would have TONS of room to
plant the stiffs, and we won’t be wasting prime building or farmland. People
could be alphabetized by county. The state flower would be the black rose! The
state bird would be the crow! The state insect would be the carrion beetle! The
state slogan would be “Dead and lovin’ it!” The license plate would be gray on
black! Tourism would go up, that’s for sure.
We still haven’t figured out
what to do with North Dakota. Maybe it should be the National Landfill.