82. World Peace

Hey folks, C.W. here. Big Dope took his wife downstairs for martinis last night and is still asleep. I know he won’t mind if I borrow his platform. I do it all the time. Besides, it is for a very important topic.

World peace.

Yes, I said, “World peace.”

Now, what, you might wonder, do I know about world peace? A lot. On my planet of Falloonia, there exists no strife of the type your planet exhibits. War? We haven’t had one since the Tlogogian Epoch

How do we manage it? It is simple really. We are a happy species. What makes us happy? The most important contributing factor is our love of Suploficating. What, you will ask, is that? It is hard to explain but it involves the communal exciting of our Suploficate membrane, an appendage that can develop a quite pleasing sensation when we exercise it.

But enough of that. You humans have no such body part, at least none without dreadful side effects, so I have had to look for some external mechanism for making your individual units happy.

I have only found one.

It is … are you ready? The banjo. Playing it, that is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always include listening to it, but playing it produces instant and universal joy. As your comedian and actor Steve Martin once said, “You simply cannot frown and play the banjo at the same time.”

So, here’s my plan.

Your country has committed, I understand, to build four new aircraft carriers at a cost expected to reach $10 billion each. The actual purpose of such a program is unclear to me but the stated reason is to produce world peace. Pardon me, but producing world peace with aircraft carriers seems to me like extinguishing a fire with gasoline, but never mind.

Here is my plan.

For the cost of constructing one aircraft carrier, we could purchase approximately 25 million banjos. This would be enough to outfit a substantial sample of the following, remembering that these categories overlap in many cases.

- Conservatives

- Hard-line Muslims and Israelis

- End-times evangelicals

- Right-wing radio hosts

- Military contractors

- The employees of Fox News

- Third-world dictators

- Others of a generally unhappy disposition

Now, for the cost of operating one aircraft carrier, estimated at a half a million dollars a day, we could supply an additional 1,250 instruments per day or 456,000 per year.

The beauty of my scheme is that each banjo would be equipped with headphones so that only the performer would have to listen to any given output.

Can you imagine Rush Limbaugh
after a few months with a banjo?

I know that you find yourselves overwhelmed by my simple logic.

Before you scoff, however, imagine Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and the board of directors of Halliburton Corporation sitting around a table picking banjos.

Peace in our time!

Next time, I’ll offer my ideas for (1) eliminating hunger, (2) fixing your country’s physical environment, and (3) providing decent housing for everyone.

(Oh, and visit our sponsors; I'm saving for my own banjo).