IN A PERFECT WORLD

In case you didn't notice, the world is not a perfect place. There's war, pollution, hunger, injustice, and of course Fred Phelps. Even little things don't make sense: rush hour traffic not going anywhere, boxing at the Goodwill Games, DVDs showing us highlights of movies THAT WE'RE ABOUT TO WATCH.

One night, after being flagrantly overserved by a bartender, I scribbled on cocktail napkins a list of world improvements. First I called it "If I Were God," then, as the beer wore on, "What Happened to My Childhood" and finally "Gibbledy Gobbledy Goo."

We'll stick with the editor-friendly, "In a Perfect World." The unabridged list is swirling above a local landfill, but here are some napkins that survived the ride home.

Ahem.



In a perfect world...

* boot would rhyme with foot.
* we'd get paid for the time we spend preparing for, commuting to, talking about, and unwinding from work.
* radio stations would keep their contest money and play some damn music.
* answering machines would come with a get-to-the-point button.
* when leaders go bad, they would mottle like bananas.
* athletes would retire only once.
* traffic lights would change when we honk at them.
* the brightness control on our TV would turn up the intelligence.
* when people graduate high school, they'd also graduate high school mentality.
* when teams lose on Fan Appreciation Day, everyone would get their money back.
* lawyers would speak a language that humans can understand.
* walkie-talkie cell phones would exist only in hell.
* sick days would include when you're sick of work.
* weight gain would be caused not by food but by some undelicious thing like televangelism.
* the Meyers would get together with the Myers and settle the spelling once and for all.
* every driver would understand the Merge Concept.
* we could surgically remove that part of our brain that plays the same snippet of music over and over and over.
* everyone would die on their one-hundredth birthday while having sex.

But the world is not perfect, so we have storms and train wrecks and Fred Phelps, left to wonder about a God who would have it this way. It would be too much to handle but for a gift from this same Creator, something to take away the anguish and put the whole world back in perspective. And that is lots of beer .

So it goes