State of the Union: Hungry

Like all concerned and involved citizens of this great country, I was holding my breath to hear Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. And then I passed out, because that’s what happens when you hold your breath for too long. Okay, so maybe that was an exaggeration. I had no idea Obama was giving his State of the Union address (I was sleeping though, so that part is true). To be completely honest, I’ve watched more Twilight movies (two) than State of the Union addresses (zero)in my lifetime, which I’m pretty sure means I will soon be deported to some desolate foreign country, like North Dakota (in my defense, I didn’t want to see either one).

It’s not that I’m not an informed citizen. Far from it, I consider myself a “connoisseur” (I think that’s French for snob) of information. For instance, I know who is playing in the Super Bowl (not my Jaguars that’s who). I bet I even know more about what is going on in this country than Obama. I mean, how “in-touch” can he be considering he lives in the Vatican City? Wait, sorry that’s the Pope. By the way, why can’t there be a cool presidential hat that all of the presidents have to wear like that thing the pope has to wear? In fact, I think we should make America more like the drinking game Presidents and Asshole, which means we have to give the president a hat and elect the Asshole of the United States of America, who has to do whatever anyone in the country says (I nominate Dane Cook, only because Justin Bieber isn’t old enough).

Anyway, for those of you who also missed the speech, I’m pretty sure you didn’t miss anything. All presidential speeches are the same: sweeping statements, lots of assertive pointing, and at least one football analogy. It was probably made up of the same key words you always hear in presidential speeches, like “hope,” “progress,” “Monica Lewinsky’s snatch,” etc. At least George W. Bush tried to make them interesting by mispronouncing words, garbling sentences, and occasionally reverting to a language that he and Jeb made up smoking weed one day in high school. But just in case you do need to know the state of the union, I will give you my own state of the union address, which I did not write in capital letters because I am humble (and I always thought pushing the shift button was a nuisance anyway).

Now I’m sure that one of the big issues that everybody is thinking about and trying to solve is health care reform. Or at least I hope it is, because I’m not and somebody needs to be working on it. “Health care reform” is one of those phrases that become really popular for people to say but people like me don’t quite understand, like “trickle-down effect.” Now I don’t really have a firm grip on the “facts” of this issue, but I do know whose fault it is: old people. If the baby-boomers had just kept using drugs and having unprotected sex like they were supposed to and died already, we wouldn’t be having this problem. I think. Or maybe I’m thinking of social security. Oh well, old people living too long is a problem in any situation.

Now I don’t really have a horse in this race, since in five years I will either be living in Sweden with a supermodel or in jail for attempting to kidnap a supermodel, but either way I won’t have to worry much about health care. What I do know is we shouldn’t go to universal health care. Oh sure, it sounds like a really good idea that would benefit everyone but rich health insurance people (who we hate anyway). But there is one big disadvantage: the Canadians use it. Nothing good ever comes from adopting something the Canadians do (hockey, listening to Celine Dion, having intimate relations with moose) and we shouldn’t start now.

The other big issue is the financial crisis. Again, this is one of those things that I am vaguely aware of, but I don’t know how or why it happened. Sort of like Lady Gaga becoming popular. As far as I can understand, someone did something that resulted in something bad which led to more stuff and POOF! Everybody is broke. Or something like that. The guy who explained it to me used a lot of hand gestures, and at the time it made sense. But regardless of how it happened, I think we can all agree that we are in dire financial trouble. By “all,” I mean “not rich people.” Rich people somehow are always the people that get more money from the government, as if rich people are on some sort of endangered species list that must be protected by the government at all costs. They never give money to the people that need it, like students paying out of state tuition to go to the University of Colorado who are stuck in the snow because they have to drop down one grand every time they want to go back to Hawaii.

So yeah, in other words the state of the union is bleak. All of our celebrities are dying, there are still two Twilight movies left, an earthquake knocked over Haiti’s last two standing huts, and global warming has yet to make it stop snowing in Colorado. But then again, there are some signs of hope. For instance, The Who will be playing at the Super Bowl halftime show and Paula Abdul isn’t on American Idol anymore. Besides, as Barack Obama so eloquently said in his closing statement to make us Americans appreciate what we have: “Hey, you could be Tiger Woods.”