Bucket with a Hole in it

You must have seen them: 100 Things to Do Before you Die, 100 Places You Must Go Before Passing, 100 Foods to Tickle your Innards and 100 Movies Before You Croak. These lists are everywhere.

But do they ever check your age? No, these are lists for a long lifetime and my lifetime is largely spent and even worse, mostly in Baltimore, Oakland and other such places. I do not have that many years left. If I tried half the hundred things the to-do guy wants, I would be way past dead. In truth, I probably have only a dozen or so neat to-do things left in me. And I do not want to go anyplace without good toilets, showers and hot breakfasts with coffee.

But some of those strange places are calling to me right now, Tahiti, Taiwan, and Toledo. And some new exotic foods would be great for a younger stomach.

What to do?

Solution. I wrote an iphone app to help. Bucket with a Hole. It not only has a checklist for the things to do in this life, but has one for your next life too. You no longer can eat hot food--slide those chiles with your finger across the screen to the next you, the one you will be when you get reborn. Ditto for jumping off some bridge with a big rubber band wrapped around your ankles.

You can make your full bucket plus list right now.

Remember how it took fifty years or so to figure out which end was up in this life. In the next life, just check your list. You will have a whole lifetime to work through it. What could be easier?

And as a bonus, we throw in a third life list for free. Some stuff like going to another planet may have to wait a long time. We plan on keeping our company going forever. That is why we ask a little more for it than Skype, email or some of those other throw away apps.

Now you ask, how do I figure out who I was when I get to my next life. This is where we got the patent, so hang on. After years of research we found that people name their dog the same in life after life. That is why I met Rex the dog in Mexico and Fifi in China. Their owners are born again Americans. You just check your dog 's name on our site and it hands you your old life's bucket-plus list. Of course we recommend that you name your dog with something that maybe has a few caps and special characters in it, just to keep things straight.

So get listing. Your next life is awaiting.

I won’t tell you to go shopping. They tried that before. You spent your little credit cards till the numbers wore off and then squeezed your house for money and spent, spent, spent. That worked real well. For a couple years.

Now we need to crank up the economy again. Our smart bank guys loaned you so much money that we all went broke spending it. We need a new crank to get things going so we can all be rich guys again.

Some people say the way to go is get a job and make something. But what kind of things do we make here in the old USA. We make music and movies. We make computer games. But you can only sell so many of those. We used to make loans and sell them to just about anyone. That one sure is gone. How about making something you can wear or turn on and watch or just pick up and carry around? We don’t know how to make that stuff anymore.

We do services, not stuff. We do wash-your-pooch, curl-your-hair, mow-your-grass, cook-your-Mac, rub-your-back, paint-your-nails services. Lots of doing. Lots of services. That’s OK, I guess. But we are pretty saturated with services. How much more can you do without getting illegal.

I wish we could still make great stuff like a good fast bicycle or a fancy new kiddee toy or a kitchen seven-in-one mixer or even an old fashioned broom. So I don’t have to always buy stuff from overthere. Overthere is nice, but overhere should be OK too. They say we cost too much to make stuff so we have to use robots or overthere people who work like crazy and don’t like money much. That’s what they say.

I read in the paper today that all the new money is in health! That’s what’s going to crank up the old economy.

So let’s start cranking. Everybody, get sick, right now!

Kickstart those doctors and nurses. Get that health money flowing by sharing some germs and bad habits.

I know we try. We eat fat. We drink our livers blue. We smoke our lungs black. We are not well. But not sick enough to ratchetup the economy. We need a good disease for every red-blooded American. Like a chicken in every pot we need a bunch of microbes in every belly. A virus in every cell. We need some good old fashioned low-grade sicknesses in every home.

We have some bad diseases that you could get. But they kill you quick. We want good diseases that just make you go to the hospital a lot, see a doctor every day, need a nurse, take a bunch of pills, but most of all, let you keep on working your health business job, helping those other sick people. That’s how to make the economy work. Everybody stays sick and goes to see each other for new treatments and meds, paying through the nose with good hard cash.

So where do we get these diseases we need? All the good diseases live down near the equator. Malaria and sleeping sickness keep you hanging on forever and taking pill after pill. They never get cured. They could be a goldmine.

I was going to call on our genetic engineers to fix up those down-south diseases to suit us up-north Americans, but why? We don’t need to do anything this time to be saved. Isn’t it funny how the world works?

Global warming is sending bunches of mosquitoes our way with lots of fancy new diseases in their pointy little snoots. I’m looking forward to that. You should too.

Now, everybody, roll up your sleeves, give them little bugs some blood and, hurray, catch something good for America.

Free Gas

Someone has to do something. Gas costs more than bottled water. No more cheap rides in Big-O-Mobiles. Even worse, maybe no rides at all.

Americans don’t ride in hi-mile, put-put-cycles or tin-can cars. They need elbow room. They need butt room. On a big steel chassis. That’s what America is about. Freedom to ride away from any problem, no matter how big.

I am afraid I see 200 million cars sitting dead in the driveway. Is this the America that our heroes, Chevy, Ford and General Motors, built? We need big thinkers to get past this mess-up. We need oil. So let’s do something and get some oil--NOW.

We tried the friendly route. How many kisses did Bush smack on Mr. Saudi’s cheeks last month anyway. It was a bunch and he didn’t even get a gas burp back.

We tried the bad-ass route and invaded a place with oil for 100 billion summer vacations to the Ozarks. But that got screwed up and now, besides not having any oil, we are spending enough on the war to fill up the Prez’s 747 for a long flight to Mars.

Everyone said just borrow, borrow. I got a credit card in the mail every day. And Uncle Sam had the biggest credit card of all. Everyone rich wanted a piece of him. Big-Bank here and Rich-Guy there. They all fed his habit. And Uncle taught us to live like him. So now we have to pay. Pay bunches of bucks for oil. And then try to sell our SUV’s as storage sheds and cheap homes for the broke.

England had this problem. They spent it all and couldn’t afford even a used tank back in ‘41. But that was fighting Mr. Hitler. Then, after the war, with all their borrowed bucks those Brits tried to repossess the world. Owing everything to everyone and just hoping they could bluff their way saying “Mission Accomplished.” That’s what they tried and now they are just a piddly-wet island. We don’t want that.

We got into hock buying TV sets, snappy shoes and oil. We are maxed out. We need to call one of those credit counselors I see on TV. I know what they will say: Hey, why are you so in debt when you got so much in the bank, the land bank that is! You got more square miles than you need and you are borrowing bucks. Just sell off some of that dirt and you can be free of debt and buy all the gas you want. Maybe even get a new four-wheeler.

There is one thing you can’t buy more of right now and that is land. And we got a bunch. The world is filled up and you can’t get any new half-full countries anymore. We should score enough money to buy us a gajillion oil wells and save the Hummer and Escalade from extinction. Or maybe we just do a trade. 50000 square miles of God’s own earth in trade for 100 years of oil. Free. What a deal.

O.K., the problem is--what goes?

It’s like GM selling their big skyscraper in Detroit. They didn’t need it. They needed factories in China. We need to think like GM. Sell something big.

I say--sell Florida. It has lots of water around it and what do those guys with oil need: water. Nice wet, jungly beaches. A nice place to take a break from hot dry sand dunes in the desert. And for the Floridians, what does Florida have that you can’t get in Belize or Thailand or Cancun anyway, where it’s a lot cheaper.

Florida goes.

OK, I am holding back on you. Here’s the secret. Who cares if we sell Florida to keep our SUV’s alive. Florida will be underwater soon anyway if we use enough oil. Just don’t tell anyone or it may break the deal.