I’d just sat down for some PC gruel at the Heartland Cafe when I noticed the large black letters on the back of the menu telling me to “Boycott France.” It said my refusal to buy French goods would be an effective protest against that country’s resumption of nuclear testing in the Pacific.

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But then I got to thinking: Why pick on France? What has France ever done, really, but give the rest of the world an inferiority complex, colonize, and start a bunch of nasty wars? What about the United States? Who came up with the whole nuclear thing anyway? And didn’t the French use our bases and our uranium for their tests? The way I see it, maybe we need to start with a boycott of the U.S. I have a long list of complaints. Moralizing by corrupt politicians, corporate welfare, bad roads, antitrust exemptions, FCC censorship, tollways, Waco, racism, sexism, manifest destiny, ugly currency, working conditions at the post office, using taxpayer money to figure out the copulation habits of turtles, rapes by servicemen overseas, the letdown you feel when you visit Mount Rushmore, sending troops to [insert country here], public radio. Hey, the U.S. is responsible for a lot of things I hate.

At least I wouldn’t have to throw out my TV. I’d watch Canada’s Degrassi Junior High and Mexico’s Dos mujeres un camino with Erik Estrada. I could watch the French Le journal on Channel 21 and hear their account of my one-woman boycott. A lot of my money would go to Chicago Cable, but TCI will soon be a multinational corporation anyway. I could buy a shortwave and listen to foreign radio broadcasts.

I could still see movies at Sony Theatres or Cineplex Odeon. They’re Canadian or Japanese-owned or something. It’s so hard to keep up (I wonder why that is?). Of course I could only see foreign films, but a lot of American movies are filmed in Canada so maybe I could see those, too. I could still go on dates, provided the guy doesn’t have a social security number. I’d probably end up getting married!