Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Bush Administration Launches "Leave No Coaster Behind" Program

Responding to allegations that the United States coaster system is in shambles and falling behind against the entire rest of the globe, President George W. Bush today formalized his administration's new tough policy: Leave No Coaster Behind.

"The United States is accustomed to being the best, and it is the best, so we must not allow other countries to overtake our coaster dominance," said the president in a media address, carefully and slowly forming difficult words such as "coaster" and "globe" with reasonable comprehensibility. He continued: "In the latest Mitch Hawker poll, foreign rides made up a substantial amount of the top twenty woodies, despite lower numbers of riders who had taken the poll. This is alarming. We will defeat other nations with our standardized polling!"

President Bush added that he was certain his new program would "work out great," but if, in a year's time or so, the U.S. still did not possess every spot in the Hawker top twenty, he would "bomb the shit out of Sweden and Germany" until they are less equipped with top-notch thrills than the USA.

Leave No Coaster Behind is a system whereby each of the country's amusement parks will be required to have all of its coasters submit to a number of yearly enthusiast polls. Parks with rides not meeting minimum national standards will lose funding, relegating them punitively to having even stupider coasters the next season. Parks with coasters scoring high marks in standardized test areas such as "laterals" and "abrupt airtime" will receive additional government funding and a slightly limp and damp (figurative) handshake from the president.

"This is absurd," said Fran Wellington, an employee of the impoverished backwoods Camden Park. "How can I compete with parks run by Disney and Universal? We barely have funding for outhouses, let alone textbooks!"

Wellington noted that "preparing Big Dipper for a standardized test all season" would actually greatly hurt the learning development of the woodie, which would be better served by learning new information each year and being encouraged to think for itself and solve problems instead of just reviewing multiple-choice answers over and over.

"This policy will teach a coaster how to place highly in a standardized poll," noted Wellington. "It won't show whether a ride actually kicks ass or sucks my balls."

The Leave No Coaster Behind program will commence with the regular 2005 spring and summer amusement park season.

--JCK