he White House announced a daring new plan this week to address the nation's ballooning health care costs, which are crippling employers and causing otherwise sensible Americans to talk about national health care like dirty fucking socialists. By making poor health a law-enforcement issue, Washington hopes to get tough on the sick with bold mandatory sentencing for citizens convicted of harboring cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

"It's time to stamp out this national cancer," announced President Bush to a menagerie of stuffed animals standing in for reporters who thought the subject of the press conference tipped off an obvious gag invite. "And that's a convenient metaphor, or Similac, because I'm actually talking about cancer. And diabetes. Uh, heart disease… what are some of the other ones? The shits. Definitely got to stamp out the shits."

The new "War on Illness" will integrate aspects of several national programs aimed at ending GDP-draining sickness, including "Get Tough on Cancer," "Zero Tolerance for Juvenile Diabetes" and "Not in My Neighborhood: StrokeBusters." Supporters hope the new initiatives will sweep America's streets clean of the sickly and infirm, and keep future generations safe from the social decay caused by sick people.

"If you choose to get terminally ill, well, that's a mistake you're going to regret," crowed Judge Thomas Redbone in support of the plan, posing with an impressively oversized gavel. "No longer can we tolerate this blight on our neighborhoods or the threat it poses to our children."

Under the guidelines of the new plan, a first offense for harboring cancer, diabetes, pneumonia or other Class 5 controlled illnesses will trigger a mandatory five-year sentence, with repeat offenders coming out of cancer remission to receive life without the possibility of parole. The death penalty remains a possibility should the disease be diagnosed as fatal. Even more controversial is the plan's call for strict "Three Strikes and You're Out" sentencing for perpetrators of mental illness, to deal with wayward individuals lacking the willpower or strength of character to stay sane.

While predictably receiving criticism from the sick and terminally liberal, Bush's plan is already garnering widespread support from Americans tired of worrying about their kids falling victim to this societal scourge, and those who worry they themselves could one day be robbed by a sick person desperate for health care.

"It's a tough law, but fair," conceded June Striber, a former cancer sufferer now in remission. June hopes that with God's help, she'll remain on the right side of the law.

Critics question how Bush intends to implement the plan without addressing the problem of our nation's already overcrowded prisons. The president quelled these concerns with news that the incarceration overflow will be handled by converting schools closed due to recent education cutbacks into prisons, as well as GM factories shuttered due to overseas outsourcing and museums no one was visiting anyway. According to the president, even further room for sickly inmates can easily be found in abandoned K-Marts and in failed dot-com office space nationwide.

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So I'm down by the movie theater the other day, showing some local kids how to play a game I invented called Pogs on Fire, and you wouldn't believe who I ran into. I won't even make you guess, it was Alvin Reggie. Okay, maybe you might believe it since you probably don't know who in the hell I'm talking about. He could be some guy I see every other day for all you know, so it might not sound all that strange to you. But trust me, it's plenty strange. Unless he was an extra in a crowd scene in some movie without me knowing it, it's pretty safe to say I haven't seen Alvin since the fourth grade.

So that made it strange, even beyond the fact of running into a dude named Alvin at all. Who's still named Alvin these days, anyway? I used to think that was a name specifically partitioned off by the federal government for use by singing chipmunks and the like, kind of like those 555 telephone numbers you see in the movies. Apparently not, which sucks big wet ostrich eggs for Alvin and other chipmunk-named sad sacks out there.

The situation was a bit uncomfortable, as it usually is when you run into someone you've been subconsciously avoiding for twenty years. It probably didn't help that I never liked Alvin at all when we were kids. That guy was so uptight I bet he wiped his ass with a toothpick. I'm not even sure why I hung out with that kid, but you do a lot of strange things when you're in grade school. I didn't like that Dennis the Menace cartoon either but I still watched the lame thing every day, just because it was on. So I guess I just hung out with Alvin because he was there. Sort of like the Mt. Everest excuse.

Up until the fourth grade, that is. That's when our so-called friendship hit the skids. Alvin has held this petty grudge ever since I told him that if he stuck a GoBot up his ass he'd acquire superpowers and robot strength. And the little eight year-old moron believed me! I'm not sure how the world court would view our situation, but I count that one as almost entirely his fault.

Grade school friendships aren't exactly forged of wrought iron; they're more like tinfoil rubber-cemented to a peanut butter cookie, so this little medical episode was enough to convince Alvin that Omar Bricks was bad news. All because the little wimp had to have a robotomy, which is medical jargon for having a GoBot surgically removed from your ass. Big whoop. Most people have to go through a lot more than that before they send Omar Bricks a "BITE MY DICK" candy on Valentine's Day. I guess Alvin was just sensitive.

So you can imagine this made for a tense meeting outside the movie theater. Alvin actually recognized me first, which was strange because I've always prided myself on looking different than I did when I was eight. But he said the flaming pogs in my hand were a dead give-away. Fair enough.

I asked him if people still made fun of him for having a first name last name and a gay chipmunk first name, but apparently he's some big shot "head of pediatrics" at a hospital somewhere so people only make fun of his name when he's not around. Unlike in grade school, where they made fun of his name while peeing on his ears. He told me the kids think Reggie is his first name, since they call him "Dr. Reggie" and kids are stupid. He didn't actually say the stupid part, but some things are self-evident. He seemed to think the name thing was somehow cool, so I didn't have the heart to tell him I almost threw up when he said that. I don't think there's a kid alive who would actually call this guy "Dr. Reggie" on purpose, if for no other reason than fear that if Reggie Jackson found out they'd get their ass kicked big-time for making Mr. October's name sound gay. Or Reggie Sanders, that guy's even bigger than Reggie Jackson and less prone to do comedy movies, so he might even be meaner.

Alvin and I caught up on old times, which took about twelve seconds since we never really liked each other and the only thing we ever had in common was that we both dug Mr. Heath bars. That's enough when you're a kid, though by the time you're an adult you figure out that some real assholes like Mr. Heath bars, too. So Alvin and I went our separate ways, him traipsing off to his "children's hospital" or whatever and me showing the kids which pogs are the best for soaking up lighter fluid without getting all soggy. Which is just as well. It might've been cool if he had thanked me for piquing his interest in medicine all those years back, maybe even diverted some of that mad pediatrician cash my way as a tribute. But he probably had other things on his mind, like when that pog caught his pants leg on fire.

Kind of funny how we both ended up working with kids though. Bricks out.

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In all ladylike honesty, this is bullshit! I had a hit TV show, I've done some pretty notable movies like Return to Skank Mountain, and my pictures as a kid look so much like Little Debbie they officially have to pay me royalties. Why the hell can't I get a credit card?

I would say it's racism, but I'm pretty sure all the credit card companies are mostly run by white people. And I basically pass for a white person, nobody really cares about if my granddad is Puerto Rican and my step-mom is Navajo. I can't really say it's genderism, or whatever that word is either, since my official birth name is Charles Coleman since my mother couldn't spell "Clarissa." Unless they have in my credit report that I somewhere attempted to buy large quantities of tampons or a girl's bike or something they wouldn't know I'm a woman.

Which leads me to the obvious conclusion I'm dealing with star-ism. Someone at the credit card deciding branch, the place where they pick who gets and doesn't get a credit card, they figured out I'm Clarissa Coleman the B-grade or higher actress and refused me the dignity of a credit card. My reputation is torn to pieces like so much duck-feeding bread and they humiliate me on paper because they hate celebrities.

It's ridiculous discrimination. I wonder if Tom Cruise goes through this sort of thing. Goes in to get a gas card so he can stop at the BP when he doesn't have any cash and they give him a big fat "No!" stamp. He's like, "I'm Tom Cruise! I have bundles of cash! Thousands of dollars!" They're all shaking their heads, smirking their middle-class heads off, and they get to go home thinking they really stuck it to Rain Man's brother today. Screw that!

I thought this was the land of the freebie and all that. Where's my credit card? I slogged through countless hours of trying to remember my lines and fixing my own make-up when the idiot lady couldn't cover up the bags under my eyes after an all-nighter, and this is the thanks I get? I don't think America appreciates its celebrities. I fought hard for this country, you know—in the pages of Entertainment Weekly and on the cut celluloid of Police Academy VIII: Back in Blue Again. Where's my parade? Hell, forget the parade, where's my Master Card?

All I want to do is buy some lousy vest worn by Robert Plant on the latest Plant-Page tour on eBay, is that beyond my scope? I make a decent penny from my acting and the commune pays for the gas to auditions and stuff. I can afford a $300 Robert Plant vest, you know. I shouldn't have to beg and scrape and go to the Shell station for a money order when I've worked this hard. I deserve a credit card. We all deserve credit cards.

That's right, I'm speaking for everybody out there. The Sean Connerys, the Jennifer Anistons, the Baldwin Brotherses—even the Screeches. Can't Screech catch a break? And what about me? Let's not forget me. In fact, let's focus on me. Let Screech and Jennifer Aniston write their own commune columns.

You know, it occurs to me that it may not be celebrity-related at all. I listed my positions and salaries as an actress and commune columnist—is that it? Is it because I write for the commune I can't catch a credit card break? A clear-cut case of commune-ism.

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that's what it is. Nobody at the commune has a credit card. Not that I could blame the Visa people. I wouldn't trust them to pay me back enough for a local phone call.

Hey, Visa, if you ever want more detailed financial information on these dildos, let me know. You slide a little $600-limit action my way and I can be an endless source of info about these deadbeats. One lousy little credit card, that's all I ask.

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