Oh my god-time for the subjunctive has come!

What follows has some hard-core grammar in it. You may not want to show it to children under 13.

When you speak English, you get stuck with facts. We Englishers speak in (what grammarians call) the indicative mode almost all the time (in fact, I am right now). Indicative is for talking about “objective facts.” We don’t do much of anything else in English. We fact, fact, fact, constantly suffering from indicative fact disease even when, in truth, we lie our butts off.

Listen to FoxTV. You get continuous indicative objective facts piled way too high.  And how much truth is in this pile? Not much.  But it is all indicative as hell!

English grammar shows that objective facts need not be be true. Anything can be true if you say it in indicative-heavy English: your kid can be student of the month, we can be number one, you can get rich with that limp idea of yours. It’s not your fault you think you are going to make it when you have the brains of a road-kill possum , the emotional control of a meth-addict Chihuahua and the cluelessness of FoxTV watcher. English grammar did it to you.

We need to put subjunctive into English.

Then we can tell true facts from the faith-based ones.

In Spanish they mark verbs in doubtful sentences by putting them in the subjunctive. Technically it is not hard to do. Flip-floping the verb tells you the listener that something is not right with what you hear. If a verb normally ends with an A then they flip it to an E, and if it normally ends with an E then they flop it into an A. Hear it flipped or hear it flopped- beware: doubt, emotion and lies follow.

You can’t flip flop English because we have too many ways to end our verbs. Spanish only has three.

So we need some other language tricks. I think we need to look a bit farther to find our truth markers when we talk. Some languages use prefixes. I say lets just put a big warning sign in the front of every sentence that is shaky. What can we put there?

Since everyone born since 1990 already says OMG to start every other sentence, maybe we can co-opt the useless God phrase and make it mean something. My rule: If you OMG, then you lie or doubt, if you don’t , you are a straight arrow (as we used to say when people were honest all the time )

I think that is the answer. OMG I have figured it all out and OMG no more unmarked lies, especially from OMG teen girls. 

And the winner is ...

Sometimes an idea is so wonderful, solves so many problems, and is so right for the times, it just cannot be stopped: ideas like easy mortgages for the poor, the Snuggie and gun-carrying clubs at the mall. Great Ideas that make America greater!

The Poopster for America Prize (the contest searching for a new eco-sound, toilet-replacement) just received one entry so powerful that we stopped the contest! It was a game changer, a show stopper and the mother of all inventions, rolled into one. Just as we predicted when we set up the contest--your days are over Mr. Crapper and your tired old invention has had it, too.

Today, the Poopster Institute proudly announces the winner in its new millennium toilet replacement contest: NetPoop--the idea that flushes away all those tired ideas of street sewer plumbing, constant street dig-ups and repairs and local, inefficient sewage plants. Mr. Crapper was right for the 1860’s; NetPoop is right for today!

Just like you do for your dog, do for yourself. Get a baggie and pick it up. That’s the NetPoop way. Then the baggies are mailed to NetPoop Central where the methane that we collect will light our American torch once again.

NetPoop won because it not only makes our trillion dollar sanitary sewer network obsolete and unnecessary, but also chips away at two other troubling issues that we face in today’s complex, interconnected world :

• Problem 1: The end of the Post Office will come when NetFlix stops shipping DVDs and delivers all its movies online. Ten percent of the US mail will disappear. Mr. and Ms. Mailman and about 3 percent of the US workforce will start looking for Macjobs if we don’t replace a ton of crappy movies with something else. Net Poop solves that problem. Now the mailman has a pickup at every house everyday (if you are healthy) and he does not have to worry about losing his job to email or iPads.

• Problem 2: Contamination of our precious dumps with dog droppings is threatening out water supply and filling our landfills with evil bacteria. Who would have thought that humans would become a dog do-do service NetPoop works for dogs too. Now humans will be on an even par with their pets: baggies for all, two legs or four.

So you are wondering why it’s NetPoop, and not MailPoop. Because you get to check your account online and see how you are doing in the save-America-one-bag-at-a-time campaign. You log in and order your individually barcoded baggies (Don’t just take the ones in the park dispenser). Then you can check your creditpile as often as you want.

Now that we have a path thru this messy issue, we at The Institute are starting a new contest cycle. Send us your worrying issues and we will pick one for the next contest. Don’t fret about a solution, just sent us the problem. Our contest will get those all-American minds humming away, working on something besides loopy politics for a while.

Green Places

Lots of places don’t get used enough in this world. I’m not talking about places like jungles or swamps— they get used. Ducks, gorillas, catfish, mountain goats, and God knows what use them day in and day out.

I’m talking about places people just fence in and lock up for themselves—I am talking about cemeteries and golf courses. I don’t know why but when I drive by these big, green, mostly empty, well-watered lawns behind fancy fences and big gates, I get annoyed. I want to do something.

Those lawns need more use. Right now both get used about the same, if you only count the people on top the ground.

My idea--why not just combine them into a fancy newGolfoleum. That's right a Gold-o-leum. A lot of golfers would love to be planted in a nice long fairway. And most dead folks don’t mind if you step on them.

OK, there is one problem – those hard rock tombstones. Even if they were lying flat, golf balls would bounce all over the place—so here is the trick. We need our cracker-jack Silicon Valley programmers to start work on i-Cemeteries. People get buried in the ground just like before and covered over with good green fairway grass, but put nothing physical gets left on the ground. To find you dead friends and family, go to Google Maps (extra-closeup view). When you walk around the Golfoleum, they hand you an iPad and it’s easy to the locate uncle Frank or sister Linda, six feet under. Sort of a treasure hunt, but you don’t dig up anything. (You can’t do that on a fairway or even worse on the green.)

You think Facebook is big, just wait for Deadbook. Think how you could jazz up your i-Grave page. Animated skeletons dancing and singing with your from-deep-in-the-grave voice. Or build a 3-D mausoleum that rivals the Taj. There are opportunities here. i-Graves may just pull us out of this economic mess. Unless you start buying them cut rate from China, that is.

OK, you point out another problem. Golf balls are hard. The last thing you want when you are standing thinking of the great times you had with the guy now doing his big farewell speech on the iPad is to get beaned with a hard flying golf ball.

I am not suggesting softer golf balls or even using Wii wands and i-Balls to play the game as you walk around the course (but , come to think of it, why not ??). Here is my idea, we start selling mourning suits. They look like the StarWars troopers but maybe in grey. All hard and plastic. If they can stop a laser sword then they can stop a golf ball. And everyone will know the difference between the fat guys in shorts playing golf and the mourners looking like they are heading to a StarWars convention. (Do they still have those?)

Maybe we could combine a couple more things in theGolfoleum space. Every little bit helps as we fill up this planet. If you can think of anything to do there, let me know (but don’t suggest anything using frisbees, dogs or guns, they really annoy the golfers.)