The legislature of the State of Washington, no doubt totally stoned pursuant to their recent legalization of marijuana (pot, maryjane, reefer, Maui wowie, etc.), has just enacted a bill requiring the use of gender neutral language in all official documents. For example, “chairman” must now be changed to “chairperson.” This will undoubtedly lead to some confusion in the legislative cafteria, which will now be forced to stop serving “manicotti,” but instead will serve “personicotti.” Such a change will likely confuse those attempting to order such an Italian dish. Whoops! I mean a dish from the ethnic cuisine developed by the inhabitants of an area on the Eurasian continent shaped not unlike a boot.

We are already far down the slope to Orwellian newspeak. People who throw bombs at school buses are no longer “terrorists”; they are now “militants.” A guy who chops his wife into sukiyaki and uses the result as compost in his garden is no longer a “homicidal maniac;” he is now  “a person suffering from a mental disability.” Somebody who sleeps in the gutter clutching a bottle of cheap hooch is no longer a “drunken bum;” he is now “a sufferer from the disease of alcoholism.”

Circumlocutions are a characteristic of cultural collapse. It is unacceptable to say what you actually mean for fear that the emperor will follow the advice of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: “Off with her head!” You may not even use words that are even vaguely reminescent of forbidden words.

But again, this is great!

Eliminating words from the language vastly reduces the difficulty of spelling bees, although it does make the game of Boggle somewhat more challenging. But we can ameliorate this problem by allowing shorter words to count, words, say, like “I” and “a.”

Periphrasis makes it much, much easier to write high school essays. Remember being told to write a five hundred word composition on “How I Spent My Summer Vacation?” The assignment will now be entitled “The Activities in Which I Engaged, Including Not Only Their Names, But Also the Details of the Manner in which I Carried Them Out, During the Time Period which Followed the Cessation of Classes at the Conclusion of the Vernal Season but Preceded the Initiation of Classes on the Day Previous to This One.” The expansion of a ten word sentence into a five hundred word essay using this method, without adding a single additional thought, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

We’re running out of people. National fertility rates have dropped below the population sustaining level of 2.1 children per woman in virtually every significant ethnic group except for the Indians (the nyaayyaya variety, not the woo-woo-woo variety). There are a variety of causes adduced by experts, but the consensus is that the chief culprits are the unfortuate invention of effective means of birth control, oral and mechanical. and the so-called women’s liberation movement. The upshot of the matter is that the glue that held society together for tens of thousands of years, the female as center of the family, has been dissolved, as women have been enabled (or forced by peer pressure) to forsake their traditional position: barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the sink.

Men aren’t helping. They have decided to become sensitive, caring, gentle; in other words, disgusting wimps. Most guys today couldn’t get laid in a cat house with a fisful of hundred dollar bills.

So, we have a severe deficit of successful fornication. A rational society would be putting Viagra and Clomid in the water along with the fluoride, but try to get THAT past the FDA and the EPA.

Well, we can’t put the genie back in the bottle again, can we? So we are faced with the eventuality that, as our population shrinks, it will also age, and we will soon be a society of geezers and geezerettes, doddering and drooling through quiet, virtually child-free streets.

But this will be fun!

Imagine the Olympics with sports like cane pole vaulting and the three yard dash (three yards being the average distance to a bathroom from the average nonagenarian’s bedroom).

Imagine the new Americans with Disabilities Act requirement that no food served in a public restaurant is permitted to require chewing.

Getting knocked up will complete its transformation from a badge of shame to a badge of honor.

Military conflicts will no longer be based on primitive firearms, but will be fought with flatulent incendiaries.

Logan’s Run, anyone?

We live in a “gotcha” world. Gotcha journalism. Gotcha taxes. Gotcha securities law. And where does this mentality come from? From too many lawyers. Fortunately, they have over-reproduced. Newly hatched legals cannot find jobs, and we can hope that, like starving lemmings, they will fling themselves over conveniently located cliffs into the raging sea below.

But the damage has already been done. We will continue to face endless prosecution. So the question becomes “How do we continue to commit our pleasant evil actions and still stay under the radar?” Well, it turns out that by a judicious choice of the type of evil, we can keep the din of condemnation to a manageable level.

Consider todays’s events. In the Middle East, the usual suspects are whacking each other upside the head, dropping rockets, bombs, pitchforks, whatever they can find, on each others’ heads. Where do we find the coverage of these events in the daily  paper or electronic news? On page seventy-five, immediately below the scores for the water polo tournament between Uzbekhistan and Outer Mongolia. And what is on page one, printed in 60 point type and adorned with an unflattering photograph? A tale of the sexual dalliances of a balding, middle-aged Senator with pre-pubescent hotties from the Carribean. What do you think will receive greater opprobrium: the mad slaughter of the harmless residents of the reclaimed desert, or the reasonably harmless hanky-panky of one more crooked politician?

Another illustrative example. While our combat troops continue to have their asses shot off in Iraq and Afghanistan, what military stories filled the headlines? Wall to wall coverage of the titillating  e-mails sent by two generals to not-so-young ladies well beyond the age of consent.

The lesson is clear. If you have the choice of either: 1) leading your horde on a pillaging expedition to Harrisburg; or 2) slipping off with a friend for a little patty cake, choose 1. Attila and Mrs. Hun would approve.

Government spending is plummeting! Taxes are rising! Businesses are failing! The workforce is shrinking!

Good.

The world economy produces as much garbage as useful stuff.

What businesses are collapsing? Twinky manufacturers. Blackberry, the manufacturer of the stupid smartphone. Banks run by gullible idiots whose mantra when talking to credit default swap salesmen is “If I don’t understand it, it must be right!”

What people are leaving the workforce? Drones who never figured out that there is nothing riskier than a steady job.

As the useless disappear, what happens next? The useful fill the vacuum.

But no, you say, it’s not that easy to fill the vacuum. There are too many regulatory hoops to jump through. Hah! All you need is a friendly legislative connection and you can jump over regulatory barriers like an Olympic hurdler. How do you get these connections? Just call your bribes “campaign contributions” and you’re in like Flynn.

And think about the expanding supply of fun people! Beautiful out-of-work secretaries who enter the hooker business. Out-of-work sanitation workers who become cage fighters. Despondent never-employed college graduates with degrees in Medieval Gender Studies who become new customers of drug dealers, thus boosting the inner city economy.

The possibilities are endless.