Nobody likes a complainer who doesn’t put forth solutions. Or at least that’s what people like to say when they get tired of listening to someone complain. The reality is, some things don’t have solutions. That’s why we’re complaining about them. If I could fix half the shit I rant about, maybe I’d be a happier person and the world would be a better place. But like those old English guys said in that song that one time, “You don’t always get what you want, so shut the fuck up, and stop complaining about people complaining.” Or something like that. I don’t really remember.
Nonetheless, I thought it wise to put forth an agenda—a working plan, if you will—of priorities that I might enact were I elected to a position to make them possible. I’m not saying this is the official declaration of my campaign for president, but if I were saying that, you might consider the following as the top of my to-do list.
Decrees I Would Make Immediately as President
1. Vice President Oprah Winfrey is to be appointed chief ego-booster to the president, and each day, she is to recite positive affirmations at me until I cry.
2. Any vegetable claiming to be a noodle, however thinly it may be sliced, is to be immediately exterminated, and any person who dare claims their vegetable is a noodle shall be sentenced to a life of hard labor in a pasta factory so they may understand that the true art of noodle-making will never include zucchini.
3. It shall be legal to violently murder any person who steps off an airplane, walks down the little hallway, and then stands right in front of the exit while they figure out where to go when there’s a whole line of people waiting behind them.
4. All Starbursts will be pink Starbursts and all who protest in favor of yellow, orange, or red will be executed on the spot in the name of our Lord and Savior, the Almighty and Powerful Pink Starburst.
5. All public restroom stalls will be fitted with doors that span the entire stall, leaving no gap for creepy coworkers to leer at you mid–bowel movement, even though sometimes you understand the urge to see yourself pooping through the gap in the stall door.
6. All hot guys with cute dogs shall be enlisted in the president’s secret reserves and called to serve at the pleasure of the president.
7. No reclining on airplanes because it’s a dick move and it should never have been allowed in the first place. Honestly, the person behind you has like six inches of freedom in front of their face, and you’re just gonna jerk back your cowardly spine and deprive them of air to breathe all for an extra ten degrees of comfort!? You’re an asshole and so is everybody you love.
8. Babies are to be kept on silent at all times, and if one goes off in public, it shall be discarded.
9. Honking a car horn for longer than one second shall be considered a crime punishable by an unrelenting air horn directly to the eardrum until explosion.
10. All microwaves shall heat Hot Pockets to the perfect temperature, whereby the saucy center is heated evenly with the crusty surface.
11. Anybody who complains about not liking the Kardashians shall be banned from enjoying anything ever again. Sorry you didn’t get famous for no reason. Let people enjoy their fucking reality TV show.
12. All squirrels are to be humanely euthanized and their meat is to be baked into pies given to disobedient children at Christmastime.
13. Any man who wishes to wear a V-neck in public must obtain written permission from the president personally. Applications for V-neck privileges should include pictures of the applicant wearing the requested garment(s). Applicants without defined pectorals and/or abdominals need not apply.
14. Every grocery store lane shall be a ten-items-or-less lane, because nobody needs more than ten groceries at once.
15. People who say “I could care less” are to be banished to a remote island with people who say “irregardless.”
16. Salad shall never be served as a meal.
17. All boxes of cereal shall cost one dollar, because it absolutely cannot cost eight dollars to make a box of Froot Loops.
18. Quinoa is banned because I don’t trust it.
19. All professional sports must be performed in the nude, except NASCAR because I don’t give a shit about NASCAR.
20. You know what, now that I think about it, let’s just ban NASCAR. No NASCAR or any cars that go faster than, like, fifty miles per hour.
21. Listening to music out loud in public shall be a crime punishable by immediate flogging.
22. Nobody with gross feet is allowed to wear open-toed shoes, in private or otherwise.
23. Outside will be heated and air-conditioned.
24. Anybody who utters the words “Can I speak to the manager?” will be locked inside a dimly lit room overlooked by a two-way mirror. Inside this room will be a desk with a locked drawer. Inside this drawer will be a gun. Inside this gun will be a single bullet. The offender will be given three clues to find a key hidden inside the room. The key will unlock the drawer. If successful, the offender will retrieve the gun and then be faced with a choice: either shoot themselves or fire at the two-way mirror, shattering the glass to find another room that may or may not lead them to safety. Unbeknownst to the offender, the second room will be occupied by a hungry mother grizzly bear recently separated from her newborn cub. If all goes well, the grizzly bear will rip the offender to shreds, whereupon the manager will enter to take the offender’s question.
25. And finally: universal health care. I mean, c’mon. We can’t let Canada have something that we don’t.