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In This Issue

• Positively Sino-Soidal
• AIDS, SARS, Avian Flu... Bean Curd?
• A Paradoxical Paroxysm of Pancakes
• Letters to the Editor
• International Yuks
• Après Moi, Le Corbusier
• Get a Free Bobblehead, for a Limited Time Only!
• The Sweet, Sensual Twang of Success
• Shut Up, Shut Up.
• To Sachs With Love
• Santa's Grottos Steal X-Mas
• Broad Goes Abroad to Paris
• A Lesson on Father Christmas
• Hugo Chavez in 2008: He’ll Crush Us Like Grapes!
• Martha’s Civil Unrest Tips
• Politics: Opiate of the Asses
• A Plan to Unite Humanity Without Using Glue
• Mad Cow: All the Cool Kids Are Contracting It
• Things Around the World on Which to Pee
• Trapped in the Closet (Deleted Scene)
• Mario Around the World!
• THEY WATCH
• The Staff of 21.4

Kimi Traube

Just bursting with beefy goodness.

Take a good look at your life. Are you successful? Fulfilled? Happy? Is your life a seething maelstrom of cameras, celebrity endorsements, and high-risk experimental drug trials? Can you soak up sympathy like it’s your job? IS it your job? Wouldn’t life be better if you had some kind of rare yet epic disease?

    These days, most of the cool diseases are reserved for certain members of the animal kingdom, usually in exotic lands like Europe and Asia, where bacteria really know how to have fun. As tempting as it is to bring some of those cells-gone-wild back to the land of the free, it’s also illegal. So the rule for any other law-breaking situation applies here: make sure no one finds out. Bank robbery? Remember, “Can I have fries with that” is code for “Your money or your life.” High-volume drug deal? Better make it look like you’re passing notes in class. HUGE BRICKS of notes. Murder? “Great job, buddy. Let me give you a pat on the back! With this crowbar!”

    You’re a resourceful college student; you should be able to come up with a plausible excuse for why you’re smuggling mad cow disease onto an airplane. Why not bring the whole cow and say you’re reuniting relatives from the old country? Why not bring two and act confused when the guy who follows you around providing pseudo-comic “relief” makes a joke about Noah’s ark, asking “You mean this isn’t it?” Then hope that no one moves deeper with a question like, “How are two female cows supposed to breed, anyway?” Questions like that might lead to awkward discussions that people should be having with their parents, not with you. Want to import bird flu? That’s a little mainstream for my tastes, but it is even easier than bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE): you’re blind, and you would have a seeing-eye dog with you, but you’re on an airplane and dogs can’t fly! Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do with myself if it weren’t for logic. Whatever it is, it would probably prolong my lifespan by a good ten years.

    Anyway, once you’re back from your journey abroad and have thoroughly washed your hands of any culture you might accidentally have picked up on your trip, it’s time to play pin the contagion on the intense failure—that would be you—so start extracting some bacteria. You can sometimes coax them out with a few perceptive compliments, more of a “My, that was some HOT binary fission” than a “What big teeth you have,” because they love to look shocking and profane in front of their impressionable younger siblings. Otherwise, it could be messy, and I don’t want to be responsible for ruining your life, at least not in a way that isn’t infinitely glamorous and won’t situate me on the cover of some magazine, beaming like a matronly hyena.

    The bacteria clutched firmly but gently—think assertive, not aggressive—between the microscopic tongs (physically impossible, which may have given away the fictional nature of a few of the “facts” of this incisive expose) are now ready for any number of uses. From the self-aggrandizement mentioned in the first paragraph (visions of a swath of politicians concealing bribes in a handshake because they’re secretly sure it was THEIR cow-fondling European escapades that are responsible for the untold death and destruction that will result if anyone so much as THINKS about eating your brain with all the holes in it) to provocation of global war!!!!!!! The future of civilization is in your hands, so please make sure you washed them at least once before you continue; I’m all about the invisible hand, but I like to know where it’s been before it sidles up to me and starts peddling its wares.

    Now, the final and would-be apocalyptic, if anyone really cared, step: consumption. Give those prions some nice Vuitton luggage and send them packing, INTO YOUR BODY. Make sure there’s a note lying around to implicate those filthy foreigners and compound your fame. After all, only important people are targeted by fierce overseas assassins, because only important people know there are humans overseas and not just a race of those hideous natives with no heads and huge faces in their torsos. The note should say something like “Dear American citizens in general—your mom!” because the people you’re framing are foreign and therefore highly sophisticated in their humor. And even if you’re leaving global terrorism out of this (and between you and me, I get a little suspicious every time someone mentions there being a globe), you’ve got high-profile tragedy practically performing Riverdance in your bloodstream, and once the film crews start rolling in, you can slyly hand them a flank steak to share with Mommy and Junior back at the ranch, thus spreading the gospel of mad cow. Blessed are the holes in your brain, for they are the peepholes of the gods.