Mars is some crazy planet. I used the dried clay to start a fire. I roasted the potatoes over the fire and ate them with some snow I melted. The melted snow tasted so good that I drank a pint or so, and I passed out.
I woke up this morning seeing things. I staggered outside my igloo and I saw a little green man! I haven’t seen green men since I ate some funky mushrooms I found growing over my septic tank. I figured the melted snow must have been 80 proof! I shook my head and rubbed my eyes and looked again. This time I saw the little man in triplicate! Only he wasn’t green anymore. One of him was red, one Yellow and one brown. It was most confusing.
I went back in my igloo figuring I needed more sleep to shake the hallucinations from my head. I popped out of my igloo once more and found that my apparition had grown exponentially. I saw not one, not three, but several hundred little green, yellow, red and brown men and women gathered about my igloo.
“What’s this?” I asked the green man closest to my igloo.
“Well,” he said, “We’ve been waiting for the arrival of our savior from beyond. We’re hoping you're him.” He stuck out a six fingered appendage and greeted me with a hearty shake. “You wouldn’t be Al Gore would you?”
“No,” I said, “why in heavens would you be looking for Mr. Gore?”
“Well, we heard on a radio broadcast from a little mechanical device that’s been crawling around here that he’s become an expert on climate change on a local planet. We were hoping he could solve our problem too. You see we have a global cooling problem. All of our efforts to thwart the problem have failed.”
“What have you done to deter the cooling?”
“Our own expert on climate change, mind you he’s no Al Gore, decided that we lacked a carbon footprint. We were hoping to generate the tropical conditions of the third round ball from the sun…the one Al Gore is trying to cool off. We’d trade our snow in in a heartbeat for the condition he’s trying to solve, if we could.”
“What have you done to establish a carbon footprint? Have you got any pollution? Any SUVs or tractor trailers?
“No.” he gave me a puzzled look.
“Have you got any factories or coal burning electrical power plants?”
“No, none of those either. We use solar power for everything on our planet. “
“What have you done to generate this carbon footprint then?”
“We developed a two-step process to create as big a carbon footprint as possible. Firstly we banned contraceptives altogether and we encourage procreation like it’s our most essential industry.”
“Fornication?” I scratched my head, “I gotta tell you, I like this first step in the process, but I don’t see how this is going to lead to global warming.”
“It’s the second step that we hoped would make the difference. You see our people get a terrible case of flatulence when we eat potatoes. So we’ve planted potatoes on every inch of soil on our planet and we hope to increase emission through the consumption of these potatoes. But so far, even with triple the population, and a national dedication to dyspepsia through spud consumption, we haven’t been able to make a dent. We've got ten times the emissions with barely a dent in our cooling problem.”
“I wish I could hand Al Gore over to you this minute. The flatulence that comes out of that man’s mouth could warm a planet over in a day. The truth is, though, you’re going about things all wrong. Your looking for a cause and effect. What you need to do is to develop a system like Al Gore has. It’s not as scientific as your method, but it’s much more effective.”
“Oh?”
“What you need to do is pay your scientists a lot of money to see things differently. Start measuring climate change from a point that shows global warming, say from the coldest point on record. Before you know it you’ll be broiling hamburgers on top of your igloos.”
“I see. Hmm. Yes, I see. It's not so much about the outcome as it is about the perception. If our scientists can learn to think correctly then the outcome will take care of itself." A smile crept over his face. "That's wonderful. Thank you very much." His smile grew even bigger, "On that note," he said, "I think we should rename the term ‘flatulence’. Henceforth, we shall call our emissions ‘Gores’ after the man behind the theory.”
“What a kind gesture.” I said, "If he were here, he would likely thank you from the depths of his digestive system."
A grave look came over his face all of a sudden. He pulled me away from the others and whispered into my ear, “Do you thing we should stop fornicating like the dickens then?”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t go so far as to limit the fornicating. As a matter of fact I’d like to do my fair share.”
“That’s awfully generous of you.” He said with a smile, “I’ll send some of the women folk into your igloo right away.”
"Anything for the cause" I said, "I'll do what I can to hold up my end."
As you probably realize I’ll have to end my transmission for the day at this point. I have to do my fair share to help with the global warming. Looks like sex and potatoes for the rest of the day, dread the thought…and with a little luck I’ll produce enough Gore to warm my igloo.