United States Acquires Mexico at Swap Meet

merica added a new addition this Fourth of July when it officially signed the papers declaring Mexico part of the United States.

"This is a glorious day for all Americans," said President Bush, for possibly the billionth time. "We have added a beautiful section of land to America's backyard, as well as taking out the 36^th 'surprise Axis of Evil' country. As soon as we finished with Nepal, we were going to fix things up there. That will certainly save us some time."

The purchase of Mexico happened quickly last week when it suddenly became available. Mexico, believed once owned by Spain until it won its independence on Sept. 16, 1821, was actually owned by an American named Merle Switzer. Switzer (1763-1817) was a traveling spice salesman who operated the route between Spain and Mexico. On one of his excursions, he apparently took the papers from Mexico from King Ferdinand VII to settle an outstanding debt; it was believed Ferdinand loved his oregano to excess.

According to Switzer descendent Orville A. Switzer, after Merle retired, "He meant to get down and check the place out thoroughly, as well as inform them he was the new landlord, but just never got around to it. He did have bad knees."

The elder Switzer passed away, he left his property including the Mexico ownership papers to his heir, who then passed it on to his heir. All were oblivious as to the nature of the documents, which were in Spanish, and were only kept because of the clever "Bless This Mess" hand-stenciled message Merle Switzer had written on the back. The frame family heirloom eventually came to Orville A. Switzer, who thought it was time to upgrade to a professional wooden plaque declaring the mess blessed. But when he extracted the document from the frame, Orville, who learned partial Spanish from his daughter's boyfriend, Miguel, deciphered the importance of the document. He then took it to a swap meet.

"I figured, 'Hey, this is Mexico. Everybody knows where it is and it's already pretty much self-maintaining. I ought to be able to get a couple bucks out of it. But I knew they'd screw me over if I took it to a pawn shop, so I asked my friend Arnold to sell it for me at his belt buckle table at Florida's Biggest Swap Meet."

Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and a regular attendee of his state's Biggest Swap Meet, spotted the documents while browsing the belt buckles, asked Arnold Plegg about them, and immediately called his brother on the cell phone. Within a few short hours, with a plea to hold the documents rather than sell them before the president could arrive, George Bush had showed up at the swap meet and paid the $78 out of his emergency presidential expense account.

Once the papers were signed over on July 4, 2002, the president quickly told the American people of their new acquisition in a televised speech that interrupted Court-TV's "Red, White and NYPD Blue" Marathon.

Details were sketchy at the time of press, but emergency sessions of Congress had been called to speculate on the value of Mexico, whether it was possible to re-sell the documents for a higher price, or use the land for some other purpose. When reminded Mexico already had a large population, the president insisted that they'd be taken care of, though he didn't specify if he meant that in the motherly or mafia fashion.

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Throughout all of history, human beings have gone to excessive lengths in an effort to not be so damned ugly. Few have succeeded, but we humans have kept bravely banging our ugly heads against that wall in vain hopes of fooling others into letting us be near them for purposes of a brief, sweaty sexual encounter. Has it all been worth it? The human race has survived, sure, but at what cost to our personal dignity?

Early prehistoric attempts at plastic surgery involved smashing in an ugly person's face with a rock, in the hopes that they would either stop being so ugly, or else go die somewhere. Problem solved either way. Modern plastic surgery involves the same basic principals, only due to inflation, the face-bashing is no longer provided free of charge to the afflicted.

Uglies unwilling to go to such radical extremes for the sake of modest downgrades in their retch factor have faced any number of bizarre alternatives throughout history, depending on what part of the world they'd been uglying up.

In Borneo, unattractive natives would stretch their earlobes down to shoulder level in an attempt to draw attention away from their unfortunate natural physiologies, preferring a lifetime of hearing "Holy shit! Look at them earlobes!" to cries of "I'm gonna sick up my monkey meat!" As an added benefit, the elongated earlobes could be tied behind the head for carry extra food, or let loose to give the impression that the wearer was running really, really fast.

Anyone who has ever scanned though a National Geographic magazine in search of library-sanctioned pornography is likely familiar with the Padaung of Burma, a small tribe that spices up the rather lackluster appearance of their women though the application of brass neck-rings, which elongate the neck dramatically and give the impression that the women are actually very expensive giraffes. Though the Padaung insist that the neck rings are used to prevent tiger bites, a quick blow to the throat of a Padaung woman proves that the brass rings provide little in the way of protective function. Politically-correct anthropologists have suggested that the rings were originally instituted to make the women less likely to be taken by slave traders, but any honest appraisal of the Padaung has to conclude that these uglies would have been flattered by the attention.

In Vietnam, the practice of teeth-blackening has fascinated anthropologists for years, or at least those anthropologists too dim to recognize this as the Vietnamese equivalent of the pre-emptive baldness technique of head-shaving popular among Western males. If your teeth are ugly and fucked up, you might as well make it look like you did that on purpose, right? Accordingly, the practice of chewing Betel nuts and brushing with off-brand convenience store toothpaste has provided the Vietnamese with beautiful black smiles for generations.

The same strategy has applied to cultures around the world that value fatness as a beauty ideal, perhaps wisely deciding that keeping thin was just a whole lot of work. Experts have argued that obesity was valued in 17th century Europe and China because it proved the person in question could afford plenty of food, but these are just the kind of experts with too much educational prestige on the line to call a lard-ass a lard-ass. Similar is the western reaction to the Tibetan tradition of considering excessive flatulence to be beautiful, which was supposed to prove that the flatulator could afford rich, gassy foods. Not true. Unfortunately for the revisionist historians, the Tibetans are just a naturally farty people.

The ancient Mayans and Egyptians both practiced the strange art form of binding infants' skulls to produce elongated, pointy-headed babies. Though many explanations for this odd practice have been offered, most available evidence suggests that the Maya and Egyptians just thought it was funny. And after all, what's a helpless little infant going to do to you? If the pointy-headed freak ever makes it to adulthood, providing the entire village with years of entertainment along the way, they're still not going to remember what you did to them when they were just a baby. It's a little surprising this practice ever died out in the first place.

Likewise with the tradition of foot-binding in China, where women's feet were kept unnaturally small by restricting their growth throughout childhood. While women were convinced the tiny feet would land them the most desirable husband, men just enjoyed getting drunk and watching their wives totter around and fall down like stilt-walkers on their useless, tiny little toy feet.

Modern attempts at marginal beauty have proved no less desperate, only more expensive. The plastic surgery industry has made millions off the idea that moving fat around to different parts of the body will somehow confuse the viewer into finding someone beautiful, like a mesmerizing shell game.

But the true benefactor of our collective ugliness has been the cosmetics industry. The idea that blondes have more fun, or at the very least get laid more in the back of convertibles, has fueled the sale of millions of bottles of hair coloring in the West, enriching the cosmetics corporations and fooling countless men into thinking their dates were going to end better than they actually would. Thanks to the blush and lipstick used to simulate sexual arousal in females wearing them, the cosmetics industry has made a fortune landing women dates and confusing Western males into a state of perpetual blueballs from which they may never emerge.

But hey, have you seen the alternative? Yeech.

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The tension in this office, sir, has become a big pussy boil. If that sounds gross, be clear I do not mean a boil on a lady's parts. I mean a boil filled with pus, which is quite gross in itself, but I'm not going too far with it. This boil has popped all over us. Watch out where you step in the commune offices—pus is everywhere.

I've just been informed by my sage counsel Sully to cut out the pus references. We can actually see the number of visitors deteriorating before our eyes. Very well—on with the story the metaphor supported.

Things came to a head (non-pussy) a couple of months ago when we noticed, despite all the promises from my brother Gay Bagel that we would be up to our necks in new advertisers, we had not a single one who had presented anything to the commune. I became curious, hoping like hell a conspiracy was involved, and it was a doozy, sir: Gay Bagel got all his advertising contracts from the shadiest, shittiest, most fly-by-night-non-batmen product people around. All this talk about raising the respectability of the commune, and this is what he had done—lined us up a bunch of cheaters and hoodlums I wouldn't have gone to myself. And I have extremely low standards where money is concerned.

When we settled our battle over the commune out of court, as you surely won't remember unless you were there, my part of the deal was the raise commune readership by a hundred percent. Well, I gave him 300%—we have easily four readers, at least, because I've met them at the commune Enthusiasts Club meeting. That's not counting all the other thousands of readers I see on the weekly ratings section—I'm not sure those are all that legitimate. Something else Gay was in charge of. But for his part, Gay gave us nothing back. Deal broken, in my book.

I told him our agreement had come to an end, in the most dramatic fashion possible—from atop Omar Bricks' mechanical bull desk. I nearly made my way entirely through my declaration, thirteen seconds, when I was bucked. That's an office record! But it was enough so Gay got the point anyway. He threatened to take me back to court. I suggested, however, than we settle this like men—nineteenth century men. Rapier fighting. He gasped in order, and I had to repeat myself, a little slower, and then he agreed to it.

I'm no slouch as a rapier wielder. I can carve my initials into an opponent in one swift motion, no big deal. But I can also leave my full mark, "Redward Bagel, Esquire." That's nothing to scoff at, although come to think of it, putting my favorite magazine after my full name may be just a little obnoxious. As for Gay's skills with a sword… they're passable.

So we met early in the morning, at the break of noon, just the two of us since none of the staff wanted to get up that early. We started the duel when the cock crowed, and since neither of us had brought a chicken, there was considerable waiting around. I kid you not, it was the rapier battle to end them all, one blade narrowly missing the other tubby body, swishes and fwips in the air like you've never heard. Both of us are now completely shaven, in all areas—that's how close it all was. I nearly died of excitement, and a deep stab just above my heart which I made with my own sword.

The ending was climactic, at least I climaxed. In the end, I blocked one of Gay's strikes with a foot and disarmed him, throwing his sword aside, useless as a eunuch's tool. I put the blade to his throat and spared his life on two conditions: One, that he relinquish all control to the commune, two, that he never tell dad. He's dead, but I don't want him hearing about it anyway.

So… the war of the Bagels is at an end. The victor: Me, Red "Victor" Bagel. And you must call me Victor.

So keep a close eye on everything here. Things are about to forever change—back to the way we used to run it all.

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