The Pun Also Rises(as seen in the North Adams Transcript)
"Oh Baby!"One of the great things about living in a world filled with so many problems is that occasionally, by chance, the problems will balance each other out. For example, oil costs continue to skyrocket, and paying for heat in the winter is becoming very expensive. But global warming may help offset heating costs by eliminating cold winters. Pretty neat, huh? In fact, 34% of all babies born this year will never experience snow. Okay, technically I just made up that statistic. On the bright side, that should qualify me to teach abstinence-only sex-education classes, because according to some recent studies, 87% of all statistics used in federally-funded abstinence-only education are wildly incorrect. They make up scary figures with no basis in reality, in an attempt to frighten people into accepting their belief system. Much like I did by saying 87%. Sometimes I think the people running government abstinence-only programs have lied about everything, even including their belief in abstinence. Randall Tobias, the head of USAID, had for years granted funding only to US groups and foreign countries that agree to an abstinence program rather than relying on condoms, both here and abroad. And now, this defender of faithfulness and abstinence has resigned amidst allegations that he has been seeing a call girl. Really, what do we expect from someone whose name is "Randy"? It's enough to make one lose faith in their faith-based agenda. And if it wasn't, recent studies have also shown that teens in these abstinence-only programs are not having sex any later than teens in traditional sex-education programs. So, the bad news is that all these kids in the abstinence-only programs are still having sex, and they won't have any actual sex-education to keep them from getting scary sexually transmitted diseases with terrifying names like "pregnancy". The good news is that Pope "Eggsy" Benedict has reordered the universe such that unbaptized babies are no longer sent to limbo. I was relieved to hear this announcement, because most babies have a hard time just walking, let alone trying to dance under a stick. As of last week, even if they can't dance, unbaptized babies who die will be sent straight to heaven. Many Catholics thought heaven was exclusively for the baptized, but like limbo, the bar has thankfully been lowered. Who knows, one day they may even let in unbaptized babies that live and lead innocent lives. Meanwhile, the Pope's limitless power lets him decide who goes to heaven when they die, and even if he went against 800 years of history to let dead babies in, so far he's keeping the live babies out. So where will we put all the babies? Why, on another planet, of course. Astronomers have recently discovered a planet named Gliese 581c (named after Wilhelm 581c) with Earth-like temperatures in another solar system. This is the first discovery of its kind, and was very exciting for the astronomical community. Although the Pope hasn't made any official announcements yet, it is likely that he will recommend all unbaptized adults be relocated to that planet. The only difficulty is that if the planet is habitable, there is a chance that it may already be inhabited. In fact, federally-funded faith-based research has determined that there is a 61% chance that Gliese 581c is not only livable, but already has alien lifeforms living there. What's more, there is an 83% chance that these aliens practice abstinence. And not just before marriage, but total abstinence. This may seem confusing, but since they don't have a Pope, they needed a way to keep the baby aliens out of limbo. Their planet will thus have a baby shortage, and we can start shipping 34% of our babies over there. And chances are, they'll never see snow. ___________________________________ All work on this page is copyright Seth Brown. If you are sharing it, please give attribution. If you want to reprint it, please contact me first. |