Pages

Friday, February 8

part I: yes, a vote for YES is a vote for yes

If I'm going to run for president, I'm going to need a party name and a campaign platform.

As for the party name, I've selected an acronym that I think will be highly effective in encouraging disenchanted voters to stand with me in support of positive change in our country. In the spirit of optimism, the acronym I've chosen is YES. I will be the YES party candidate.

YES to change! YES to money for everybody! YES I'm still working out what the letters that spell out YES actually stand for!

I haven't settled on a representative animal for our party but this is on my agenda. It is bulleted and underlined.

Like many presidential candidates, I have a few issues about which I'm particularly fond of discoursing, as frequently, loudly, and vaguely as possible especially over a couple of good chocolate martinis.

First of all, in regard to those giant trucks that everyone is buying up like Skittles at a Disney movie - these will be banned. Now I'm not sure what people are using these things for. Most of them are so shiny and clean and reflective that you can find out if that broccoli is still in your teeth when they pull up beside you at stoplights. So I can only assume that they are primarily being used to haul kids to the mall for a few well-spent hours at Abercrombie and maybe an Orange Julius or one of those giant soft pretzels that gushes out neon-orange cheese when you bite into it.

Therefore, as president, if I don't see a nick, a dent, a scratch, or, better yet, an actual tree sticking out of the back, your giant, non-work-related truck will not be allowed to continue to contribute to the hopeless congestion of our city streets and the pollution of our environment.

YES to no more consumer-owned giant polluting trucks clogging up our roads!

Beyond the sheer ridiculous wastefulness of these giant trucks, according to my intelligence we have other reasons to fear these vehicles. What I'm talking about here, if you haven't already sensed where this is going, is GIANT EVIL ROBOT TRUCKS.

I firmly believe that if we continue on the course we have set for ourselves as a nation of giant truck-consumers, we will wake up one terrible morning to find that our love for giant things has poisoned us and that we are all dead.

Or at least if I am not elected president, our future will surely be bleak. Here's what will probably happen:

Within the next few years, our giant trucks will continue to increase in size. Instead of driving them, you will be now able to program them with different routes and they will drive themselves while you shave or nap in the back or make gratuitous rude gestures at the smaller, slower, and more environmentally correct vehicles on the road far below.

Eventually you won't even need to be present in the vehicle to run these giant trucks. They will be able to pick up the groceries or the kids for you and run down cyclists entirely on their own. It will be super-awesome until, one day, their programming runs amuck and they screech out of control and get up on their back tires and start to smash buildings in the downtown and chomp trees into mulch with their glittering front grilles. The police won't be able to stop them because they are built so goddamn Ford tough. The National Guard could probably destroy them with air strikes and tear gas if only they weren't spread so thin, facing giant truck uprisings throughout the country, because these trucks have also learned a primitive form of communication and by now have created a deadly nationwide web of giant truck anarchists. And they are killing everybody!


It's only a matter of time.

If I am elected president, I will consider it my responsibility - nay, my duty - to prepare a pre-emptive attack against these giant evil robot trucks of the future.

And YES, it will be totally awesome.

No comments: