Humor

Iowa Secedes from The Union

by Dowling Woods, futurian*

Well, it’s a simple fact that in the year 2010, Iowa seceded from the Union, which was announced with much fanfare from the Iowa Capital Building steps, including the Lincoln High School Band playing “We’re From Iowa, Iowa, Best in all the Land” with a solo by Jeff Cohee, and with the words changed to say, “Best in All the WORLD.”

But no one noticed.

The secession of Iowa from the Union was not noticed much by the rest of the U.S., not to mention the world at large, mainly due to the fact that it happened after the inadvertent explosion in outer space over Iowa of a nuclear defense satellite left over from the Star Wars Extra-Environmental Tactical Plan (SWEET-P). SWEET-P of course was to have as a secondary effect the reduction of global warming, but instead the detonation of the satellite caused a “gridout,” or meltdown of all unshielded data lines in the US, and as U.S. President John Hagelin said, U.S. data exchange capabilities were “blasted back to 28.8 modem speed.

”Due to the resultant media blackout, Iowa found it difficult to get recognition for it’s secession efforts, despite such practical steps as renaming the Iowa National Guard the National Iowa Guard, and requiring passports of truck drivers crossing the border on Interstate 80. Iowa had (accidentally, as it turns out) seceded from the Union because of the ban on the sale of all meat products after the Porcine Elephantiasis epidemic of 2004.

The secession effort seemed doomed from the start, and not only due to communications challenges. Even the election of Al Gore as “Iowa President for Life” backfired when Al suddenly signed on as the U.S. ambassador for the Intergalactic Political Mission to Planet 83-B in the Alpha Centauri region. Iowans were puzzled, since no one was expected to survive the mission, and only the space travelers’ descendents would actually live to land on 83-B.

“We think he got a better offer,” said Acting Governor/President Clyde Cleveland. Local wag Bob Truog of Vedic City, Iowa said “Well, I guess Al CAN take it with him, but where will he spend it?,” a joke that garnered Truog 13 minutes of fame on the CWNFC scale (Clayton Williams National Fame Counter).

But of course all of that national exposure was later, since there was no interstate communication during the entire Iowa secession period, due to the Internet failure. The wipeout of broadband web connections was complete for at least 10 days, and in that time people were forced to have actual conversations with their spouse, for example, and even read books at times. Many suffered significantly due to the lack of data input, but most difficult of all was the lack of the International First-Run Satellite Digital Movie Feed (IFRSDMF) due to the digital breakdown.

Old VCR’s were selling for three and 4 thousand dollars each, and tapes of the Little Mermaid were priced at $150. [Editors note: 150$ in 2010 is about $25 in 2002 dollars].

As it turned out, the Iowa Secession was an artifact of the gridout, since the secessionists were later discovered to have won on a miscount caused by technical inadequacies in the gridout-damaged tally system.

Even so, for a few weeks, Iowans had fun imitating the famous rebel yell of Civil War days. Training sessions were held in local city halls. Unfortunately for Iowans, some secret recordings of these “Yell-ins” were made, which, when circulated throughout the Southern U.S. were replayed with great glee for several months, and statements such as “they couldn’t yell their way out of a paper bag” and “they sound like Old Yeller” were a few of the more polite comments.

Other news from the future:

2007– AT&T announced a ten cents per minute payout for long distance calls made in the U.S., and 25 cents for international calls. This was a boon to high schools in the US, who started supplementing school income by having foreign language students make random “wrong number” calls to foreign countries in the appropriate language under study.

2008 – The Virtual International Snack Theatre Association (VISTA), in a competition uniting performers who were digitally projected into the performing space using the http://www.teleportec.com/ technology, announced the winners of the Charna Halpern Prize, which went to the Villegas sister triplets, who won the annual Musical Improv Fake-off, although they were physically performing from three separate locations in a home in Laguna Beach, California, a mountain cabin in Oregon, and a small apartment in Coralville, Iowa.

2009– The Bluetooth technology-powered 3-D Surround Virtual travelogue at the Custer memorial had to be suspended on the weekend of April 3, due to its “too realistic” depiction of the battle. Subsequent tourists were cautioned to participate with caution, and not to wear dark blue.

*Dowling Woods is a futurian due to his ability to “premember” the future. He reports that he can’t however, remember the past, and that the future he premembers may not actually happen, and could change, based on free will, but this is how it looks as he premembers it right now.