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I'M ALWAYS LOOKING ahead, trying to come up with a new invention, searching for a way to make my next million.
Right now, I've got a sure-fire project in the works: the ozone sucker.
I see great potential for this invention, a machine that could save humanity. The idea came to me the other day when I watched the TV weatherman predict that the air would be so stagnant for the next few days that a Code Red air alert already had been issued.
In case you don't keep up with such things, Code Red is a smoggy condition so terrible that at least half the world's population will die if they go outside their air-conditioned homes while the alert is in effect. When I was a child, we simply called such periods "hot and muggy days" but that was before upper middle-class paranoia became the craze. Now, these are Code Red days.
Actually, you won't die if you go outside on a Code Red day but, in the interest of ratings, TV weathermen want you to think you might. They advise viewers not to venture outside on such days for fear of suffering heatstroke or severe dehydration.
Only those who normally work in air-conditioned offices pay any attention to these warnings; the rest of us just go about our business as usual. If we didn't, there would be no homes built, no streets paved or no farm work done between mid-June and mid-September. Somehow, despite those dire predictions, most of us seem to survive--although we don't smell very good at the end of the day.
The reason we're not supposed to go outside on Code Red days is because of the ozone in the air. Gasoline engines, you see, release carbon monoxide and that gas reacts with something in the air to create ozone, and ozone will kill us all.
Even putting duct tape (a government tool used to ward off terrorists) above your door won't save you from ozone. In the words of former President George "First Daddy" Bush, "Ozone is baaaad."
But ozone is also "gooood." While half the world's population succumbs to ozone on any given 90-degree day down here, way up there in the atmosphere, up in the fabled ionosphere, there is a shortage of ozone. Surely you've heard about that. The same automobile engines that create ozone down here on the ground destroy it way up there in the sky.
I've never quite figured out how this works. Scientists swear it is true. Somehow, it doesn't seem logical to me, but neither do those scientific predictions that global warming will cause the next ice age.
As a matter of fact, all that global warming with the impending ice-age doom and gloom is part of this ozone problem. The gasoline engines have sucked holes in the Earth's ozone layer and now all the unfiltered light from the sun is coming down. And, as First Daddy would say, it is doing "baaaad" things down here.
Although scientists insist these ozone holes exist, you couldn't prove it by anyone on the East Coast. We have seen so little of the sun this spring that we not even sure it is still there.
But if the sun is still there and the ozone holes do exist, the great minds of our society say we are in for big trouble unless that ozone layer can be patched up.
Well, if we've got too much ozone down here and not enough ozone up there, all we need to do is pump some of what is down here up there. This seems like a logical solution to me, a simple way to fix a complex problem.
The answer, of course, is the ozone sucker (not to be confused with the "I'm Gonna Get You, Sucker"). We just suck up all the ozone down here and pump it up into those ionospherical holes and the next ice age is put on hold. I'm surprised the world's scientists haven't thought of this.
Then we could forget about those Code Red days and concentrate on reducing the Code Orange (when only one-fourth of the world's population perishes) days. We could go back to calling those sultry summer afternoons "hot and muggy" and sit in the shade of an old oak tree and sip lemonade instead of staying inside and worrying if our next breath will be our last.
Although I've been working day and night on my ozone sucker, I haven't got it perfected yet. About all I've sucked up so far is cat hair and the tail feathers of an old turkey buzzard that flew too close to my machine.
But I'm not giving up! Somehow, I'm going to suck up that ozone down here and pump it up there and make the world right again. And when we get all the ozone from down here up there, that will be "goooood" and First Daddy will be happy.
So, if you're out one day and you see this big old hose sticking up into the sky, don't be alarmed and put duct tape all around your door. It's not a terrorist paintball gun or creatures from another planet looking for supper, it is just me and my ozone sucker out to try and save the world.
The long line outside my front door will be the patent lawyers who want to represent me.
Maybe I'll try to pump a few of them up to plug some of the holes in the ozone layer. You know, that might be a better idea because I'm not sure which is the bigger problem at ground level--ozone or lawyers.
Lawyers, however, would probably clog up the hose, so I'll just stick with sucking up ozone! And I am confident that my ozone sucker will make me a fortune.
Someday, the world's scientists will be asking themselves, "Why didn't I think of that?"
Don't tell me this old down-home boy don't come up with good ideas!
DONNIE JOHNSTON is a staff writer with The Free Lance-Star. Contact him by mail at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va., 22401; by fax at 373-8455; or by e-mail marked to his attention at gwoolf@freelancestar.com.